City Related

When the entire ethics commission of a major county resigns, something is seriously wrong. This is what recently happened in Jackson County, MO, home of Kansas City and Independence. According to an article in Tuesday's Kansas City Star, most of the resignations occurred because the county legislat…

“There’s no conflict,” the mayor said last night. “It wouldn’t be a story if his name wasn’t Menino.” (from a recent Boston Herald article) This is Boston's mayor, Thomas M. Menino, speaking about his son's year-old job for a construction company that has done a great deal of business with the city…

The situation discussed in the previous blog entry also provides a good example of why it is important to have a contract avoidance provision in a local government ethics code. Here is the one in the City Ethics Model Code: Any contract, agreement, or other business transaction entered into by or w…

Life would be easier for honest politicians if there could be no intersection between government contracts and contributions to campaign and candidate-associated political committees. The possibility of Commerce Secretary nominee Bill Richardson's involvement in a New Mexico pay-to-play situation h…

The International City/County Management Association (the city, county, and town manager professional organization) is holding a 90-minute audioconference on local government ethics on January 29. I do not know the details of the program, and I am not endorsing it, but it sounds like a very inexpen…

The Nevada legislative immunity opinion has come down. It's in two parts, searchable, 1 and 2. There's also a Las Vegas Review-Journal article on the decision, which says that the ethics commission plans to appeal the decision. Despite its finding against the state ethics commission's jurisdiction …