Conflicts of Interest

Should council members do business with each other or with the mayor? Another way to put this question is, does their doing business together give rise to a conflict of interest?

Luis Toro, director of Colorado Watch, wrote an interesting Huffington Post post yesterday about ethics issues relating to Colorado's public trustee system.

Update: July 27, 2012 (see below)

One of the things that really ticks citizens off is when a local official uses his position to try to get out of a traffic ticket. The financial benefit may be minor, but there are two things that are major. One is that this conduct suggests that favoritism is common in the government. That is, the expectation and provision of special treatment is an indication of institutional corruption.

Providing incentives to attract companies or get them to expand their operations in a city or county has always been a controversial issue. Incentives are seen as necessary to attract, keep, or expand jobs locally, but they can also be an unnecessary way to get local governments into bidding wars (or what is presented to them as a bidding war) with other local governments, to the benefit of companies who are going to build or expand no matter what local governments offer.

According to Courthouse News Service articles Tuesday and yesterday, former Georgia ethics commission executive secretary Stacey Kalberman and her deputy, Sherry Ellen Streicker, filed suits against the commission and its chair, Patrick Millsaps, for retaliating against their attempt to investigate then Governor Deal's alleged campaign finance violations by removing Streicker's position from the budget, seriously cutting Kalberma

One of the things that always fascinates me is that, while politicians have no problem asking experts legal, financial, engineering, or human resource questions, they feel they know what they need to know about government ethics questions.

Update: June 20, 2012 (see below)

The saying goes that there are two sides to every story. But more commonly there is a story and ways to spin the story. The problem is telling them apart.

What is the worst thing a government official can do when a conflict situation becomes public? Is it worse to misrepresent the law, to make accusations against those making the conflict situation public, or to ignore the situation and hope nobody notices?

A poor and disconcerting judicial decision on local legislative immunity came down on May 24 from the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, Kickapoo Tribe v. Black.