City Related

What's the best reason for mayoral candidates not to disclose their finances, monies received directly or indirectly from the city, etc.? Just ask some of the candidates running to replace disgraced Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. According to an article in today's Detroit Free Press, candidate Dav…

Update below: Back in August, I wrote a long blog entry praising the way San Diego's Centre City Development Corp.'s  (CCDC) board handled a conflict matter. I focused on the board's refusal to pull the usual San Diego (and elsewhere) stunt of denying that anything serious had occurred. Instead, it…

There's a national local government annual ethics report that is worthwhile taking a look at. It comes from the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), the professional organization of city, county, and town managers. To my knowledge, no other local government executive or legislat…

Because local governments' annual ethics reports serve so many purposes -- publicizing the ethics program's existence, educating officials and the public about what an ethics program includes, and making an example of those who do not file disclosure forms or are found to have participated in uneth…

Annual reports are, among other things, one of the most important, and overlooked, enforcement mechanisms. At the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) conference last week in Chicago, the executive director of the Philadelphia Board of Ethics, Shane Creamer, presented the board's first campa…