Local Government Practice

There is lobbying, and then there is lobbying. One of the most difficult things about regulating lobbying is defining what it means to lobby. And according to an op-ed piece last week in the New York Times by journalism professor Thomas D. Edsall, it is getting harder to define lobbying. Those who …

According to an article yesterday in the Seguin (TX) Gazette, there will be a perfectly ordinary local government ethics occurrence next Monday in Seguin, a town of 25,000 outside San Antonio: the city's ethics commission will meet in closed session to discuss a recently filed ethics complaint. The…

I've been writing a lot about government ethics and behavioral psychology over the last few years. I consider some of the findings of behavioral psychology, especially about blind spots, essential to understanding what leads to ethical misconduct and, therefore, essential to ethics training, ethics…

A "resign to run" law is an unusual sort of conflicts of interest law. It requires that before an elected official runs for a different office, she resign from her current office. Philadelphia's "resign to run" law is one of the most onerous ones. According to the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelph…

According to a press release from the American League of Lobbyists, the association that lobbies for lobbyists, the membership has voted to change its name and "brand" to the Association of Government Relations Professionals. It's good that lobbyists do not run election campaigns, because their bra…

Tomorrow morning, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway, regarding prayer at meetings of local legislative bodies. In addition to the important constitutional questions regarding separation of church and state, there are government ethics questions inv…

Updated: November 20, 2013 (see below) The gift regulation proposed by Philadelphia's ethics board last week (attached; see below) provides a great opportunity to consider many issues involving gift bans and exceptions. It's a great thing that the ethics board has chosen to provide guidance with re…

In many jurisdictions, lawyers have sought to be excluded from ethics program jurisdiction, arguing that their conduct is regulated by their state's attorney disciplinary process. Recently, in Louisiana, other professionals have sought to be excluded from the state ethics program's jurisdiction (wh…

Yesterday evening, I attended a meeting of my town's planning and zoning commission. The principal agenda item involved a request for an amendment to the town plan to allow the building of a private recycling center in the town. The commission's secretary read a letter from the requesting party's a…

Here's an interesting local government ethics scenario from Ottawa that deals with the often neglected oversight relationship. According to an article this week in the Ottawa Citizen, six people died in a recent bus-train accident at the Woodroffe Avenue train crossing in Ottawa. This brought atten…