City Related

Even the most enthusiastic good government politicians often have a serious blind spot:  themselves. They believe that everyone else is into pay to play and selling out to big contributors. But not them. They're only doing what's best for their city.  They have only the community's best interests in mind. And sometimes the community needs those big contributors, and who but he is best situated to get them to open their wallets? However, the big contributors don't have the same blind spot, so they don't want the public to know how much they're shelling out.

When it comes to local lobbying oversight, cities are falling like flies. At least in Canada.

I've written several posts about individuals who have created fiefdoms (a D.A., a housing authority director, a city pension board attorney, the director of a council of local governmen

According to an article yesterday on the Baltimore Brew website, a year ago Baltimore's mayor officiated at a wedding between two individuals who lobby the city government. In Las Vegas, no less.

Mayors, judges and, sometimes, other local government officials often officiate at weddings. Some ethics codes have a special exception from the gift ban that allows for this, but most make no mention of it.

Two big local ethics/election stories come from Contra Costa, CA and Tallahassee, FL.

Ethics Reform Package Features a Different Sort of Public Campaign Financing Program

The last time I discussed contingency fee arrangements in local government contracting was 2007 (the focus then was on attorneys). A front-page story in today's New York Times shows clearly that I have not been giving this topic the attention it deserves.

In the last few years, one of the biggest topics in the general area of government ethics, including campaign finance, lobbying, and transparency, has been the effect of huge campaign contributions by corporations and billionaires, which has become increasingly doable pursuant to a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

The former chair of the Venice in Peril Fund wrote a disturbing piece for the September 25 issue of the New York Review of Books about corruption in Venice. This corruption derived largely from a major project:  the building of flood protection barriers, known as MOSE. Although this project was larger than those in most cities, the misuse of funds, the failure to competitively bid, the false invoicing, the nepotism and the cronyism are no different.

Ferguson, MO — where Michael Brown was recently killed by a police officer, and the police department's first reaction was to protect the officer and keep the facts secret — is an unusual case of a local government where a scandal is likely to actually increase rather than decrease citizen participation in government.