City Related | City Ethics

Ethics Codes & Reform January 29, 2007

How Should Ethics Reform Be Done?

The ethics reforms coming out of New York and Utah provide two contrasting, yet equally questionable approaches. In New York state, ethics legislation was negotiated among the new governor, the assembly speaker, and the senate majority leader, behind closed doors. In Utah, the governor said he woul…

Ethics Commissions & Administration January 26, 2007

Funding Ethics Commissions

As I state in my comments to section 207 of the model code, cutting the funding of ethics commissions is a popular way for politicians to prevent investigations from happening. Therefore, ethics reformers are always looking for new ways to ensure funding. In Oregon, legislators decided to turn to l…

Conflicts of Interest January 26, 2007

Multiple Hats

What's the difference between wearing multiple hats and having conflicts of interest? Former Vancouver City Manager Ken Dobell is the project manager (contractor, not employee) for a cultural precinct in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is also chair of the finance committee of the Vancouver Organiz…

Resources & Learning January 24, 2007

Cynicism About Ethics Training

One of the most serious obstacles to ethics training is cynicism. For example, a councilman in South Lake Tahoe, California said, according to a recent article in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, that the California requirement of ethics training for all municipal officials is an indication of a breakdown …

Ethics Commissions & Administration January 24, 2007

Clear Air in Manhattan: Independence of Ethics Commissions Part 2

How can an ethics commission be truly independent? In the model code I wrote as the beginning of what I hope will be a long public conversation about all aspects of municipal ethics, I suggest that a municipality's legislative body appoint members from a list given to them by the local League of Wo…

Ethics Commissions & Administration January 23, 2007

Clearing the Air?: The Independence of Ethics Commissions

When an ethics commission is appointed by the city's principal officials, can it possibly clear the air with respect to allegations against them? Baltimore's Board of Ethics has five members, four of them appointed by the mayor, three of those confirmed by the Council, and the fifth member appointe…

January 11, 2007

Philadelphia's "Ethics Agenda": Making Ethics Central to a Mayoral Campaign

Philadelphia's Committee of Seventy may be a little gray (it recently celebrated its 100th birthday), but in its 'reborn' form (it had taken the limited role of monitoring election activities) it still knows how to take a stand and make a difference. It has made ethics a central issue of the upcomi…

Conflicts of Interest January 9, 2007

Conflicts of Interest: Taking a Holistic View

"Passion" is not the first word that comes to mind when one thinks about municipal ethics (but it would be interesting to know what word does first come to mind). And yet passion is what you can find in an article and on-line discussion about a current conflict controversy in Billings, Montana. At …

September 6, 2006

The Ethics of Today's Municipal Pension Plan Problems

The New York Times has been running a series of articles about municipal pension funds (by Mary Williams Walsh, Michael Cooper, and Danny Hakim, August 20, 22, 27, September 1, 4, 2006). The articles focus on two principal problems: (1) pensions have been increased, largely in order to get short-te…

Conflicts of Interest August 11, 2006

Contracting: A Growing Ethics Problem in the Age of Privatization

Contracting is one of the municipal ethics issues that is most often overlooked as an ethics issue. One reason is that the laws governing competitive bidding are often at the state level. Another is that municipal competitive bidding laws often appear outside codes of ethics (often because they are…

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