City Related | City Ethics

April 14, 2008

How Entitled Should Voter Registration Employees Feel?

People use sunshine laws to retaliate against political opponents (it’s easy to find technical violations and use them to show an opponent is not being open; and you don’t even have to find them: newspapers write up baseless allegations just the same). But it is rare that sunshine laws lead to fist…

April 12, 2008

New city ethics regulations face first challenges

This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at https://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/041208/met_267642192.shtml. The Florida Times-Union April 12, 2008 By BETH KORMANIK, The Times-Union The city's Ethics Commission believes the rules are clear: Lobbyists must list the individual clients an…

Ethics Commissions & Administration April 11, 2008

The Duties of Ethics Board Members: The Bad Example of Detroit

Do ethics board members have a duty to follow more than the letter of their ethics code? This issue has arisen with respect to the Detroit Board of Ethics. The Board’s chair, attorney Reginald Turner, joined the membership (that is, fundraising) committee of a defense fund for Mayor Kwame Kilpatric…

April 10, 2008

Eastern Oregon Takes on Government Transparency

Financial disclosure scares citizens away from sitting on local boards and commissions. This is the “fact” stated every time any level of financial disclosure is discussed. In my state, Connecticut, all the financial disclosure that was required in a recent bill was the name of one’s employer, and …

Local Government Practice April 7, 2008

The Hatch Act's Restrictions on Running for Local Government Office

There is one local government conflict of interest that is often ignored because it was created at the federal level by a federal statute. The statute is known as the Hatch Act of 1939 (Title 5, Subchapter III), originally known as An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities (they don’t make …

Transparency & Disclosure April 5, 2008

Transparency vs. Fear

New York politicians are making life hard for ethical politicians. “Present yourself as ethical,” they are effectively telling them, “and everyone will be harder on you when you don’t live up to expectations. Better to create no expectations at all.” This isn’t what the government ethics community …

Ethics Commissions & Administration March 29, 2008

Parties and the Selection of Ethics Board Members

One nearly untouchable aspect of government ethics is the role of parties. This is less a problem in municipalities than at other levels of government, because most municipalities in the U.S. are nonpartisan, although parties still play a role. But many municipalities and, in some states, particula…

Ethics Codes & Reform March 25, 2008

The Conditions for Ethics Reform

In an upcoming book, The Rule of Law and Development, Michael Trebilcock and Ron Daniels divide developing countries into three groups (according to an article in last week’s Economist): 1. Those where politicians, lawyers, and the public all support legal reform (e.g., Central Europe after the end…

Transparency & Disclosure March 24, 2008

A Cure for Transparency Problems: A Model Website and Blog

An essential problem in many local governments is a lack of transparency. When people do not know what is happening, and access to information is very difficult, democracy is undermined in several ways. Reformers have a difficult time showing what is actually happening or preparing for public meeti…

Conflicts of Interest March 22, 2008

The Privilege of Slicing Into the Body Politic

The following appeared in a recent op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times by a young doctor, SreyRam Kuy. The issue was a health insurer asking doctors to report patient conditions that might be used to cancel health insurance. “Physicians hold a trust to protect the health of our patients. We canno…

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