Conflicts of Interest

In the Indiana Secretary of State race, the headlines are all about voter fraud. But the bigger problem, I think, involves the failure of one of the candidates to differentiate himself from his seat on the Fishers city council.

Two days ago, I wrote about a Louisiana lawyer-legislator who is arguing that disclosure rules should not apply to lawyers, because the practice of law is regulated by the state supreme court. The story behind an indictment in New Jersey this week makes a strong argument for applying disclosure rules to lawyers, as they are in California and North Carolina, only better.

Update: October 15, 2010 (see below)

Decision-makers are given too much credit. Most individuals who vote on government matters are non-professionals who are paid little or nothing, and who rarely focus on the matters before their body. They are, therefore, very dependent on staff members who are professionally trained and who are paid to focus on the matters before the body.

Four years after I wrote a blog post entitled The Ethics of Today's Municipal Pension Plan Problems, according to an op-ed piece in the New York Times, New Jersey agreed with the S.E.C. never again to fraudulently hide

Using government employees for private purposes is one of the most common ethics code violations.

This violation is especially bad because it involves coercion of individuals, in this case subordinates who are not in a position to say no. Coercion and intimidation rarely occur outside of a poor ethical environment.

This violation also shows a serious failure to recognize the boundary between public and private, which is the heart of government ethics.

The lead article in yesterday's New York Times was on charities set up by members of congress.

Update: September 6, 2010 (see below)

For many local government employees, gratuities are the principal way in which an ethics code affects them, because many ethics code prohibit gratuities. But are they really a government ethics issue? In other words, does a government employee, say a sanitation worker, have a conflict or create an appearance of impropriety by accepting a tip from a citizen for whom he has done routine work?

Should advisory board and task force members be excepted from conflict of interest rules? Jurisdictions disagree about this. Some believe that, when a board has no authority to act or implement, the usual rules should not apply. The principal argument is that there are times when a government needs to get people with opposing interests together — such as business and union interests — in order to hash out community problems. Another argument is the need for expertise.

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, the New York Governor’s Task Force on Public Authorities Reform has filed its report (not yet available online) on the implementation of the Public Authorities Reform Act of 2009, whose provisions are summarized in a separate document.

The usual image we get when we hear about a government official getting something free from a contractor is of a new kitchen or driveway. But free services can also be invisible, like legal advice and other professional service.