Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place
What can a local official do when he is required to withdraw from a matter that involves a close personal friend who's in hot water due to that official's feud with another official? What do you do...
View ArticleA Miscellany
Party Committee Members on EC According to an article in the Hartford Courant this week, a Newington, CT mayoral candidate, and council minority leader, who has made ethics allegations against the...
View ArticleAn Audit Report on the Palm Beach County EC
In an April 2013 blog post, I wrote about the problems surrounding a Florida state senator's request for a state audit of Palm Beach County's EC. That report, drafted by the state legislature's Office...
View ArticleA Florida Legislative Committee Calls for the Suspension of the Palm Beach...
Toward the end of a video of the November 4 meeting of the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, the committee vice-chair says that the testimony he heard was very "troubling." I felt the same...
View ArticleA Judicial Decision Involving the Language of "Interest" and Non-Financial...
As I keep saying, conflicts are about "benefits" and "relationships" rather than about "interests," and this should be reflected in the language of ethics codes. The clash of these two kinds of...
View ArticleCarrigan Decision: Seeking Ethics Advice Is Due Process
The long-running Carrigan case (Carrigan I, that is) may have finally come to an end. And it's a very good end. After the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Carrigan's absurd argument that a council member...
View ArticleNagle on Withdrawal As Cure for Campaign Contributions
It was pointed out to me by Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles, that back in 2000 John Copeland Nagle, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, wrote a law review article...
View ArticleA Miscellany
The Boss of the Ethics Director's Bosses According to an article this week in the Free Times, an FOI lawsuit was filed against South Carolina's ethics commission, because its director had said that a...
View ArticleTwo Complex Conflict Situations in Montpelier, VT
According to a recent Reader Supported News article, ethics allegations have been made in Montpelier regarding two high-level officials. Both allegations are worthy of a closer look. According to the...
View ArticleApparent Misuse of Government Ethics Authority to Win a Vote
In a New York Times column today, Michael Powell has unearthed an ugly-looking government ethics situation in New Jersey involving apparent misuse of government ethics authority to win a vote. The fact...
View ArticleInteresting City Lobbyist/County Election Board Member Conflict
When a lawyer decides to represent a private client, she does not give up her right to vote or petition governments on her own behalf. But what about when a lawyer decides to represent a public client,...
View ArticleA Miscellany
Sometimes Withdrawal and Formal Processes Are Not Enough It never looks good when a high-level elected official gets a job with the government while in office or soon after leaving office. It looks...
View ArticleWhen a Department Engages In Ethics Advice and Enforcement
What should an ethics program do when an agency or department takes ethics advice and enforcement into its own hands? This issue has arisen in Hawaii County, according to two articles in West Hawaii...
View ArticleWhen the Reason for Withdrawal Appears to Be False
What should be done when an official withdraws from participation in a matter and gives a reason for withdrawal that appears to be false? Why would an official provide a false reason for withdrawal?...
View ArticleMunicipal Attorneys Should Stay Out of Ethics Proceedings
When a city or county attorney's office does not represent the ethics commission, should that office play any role in an ethics proceeding? I don't believe it should. But that is what happened recently...
View ArticleConflicts: The Devil's in the Verbs
As we know, the devil's in the details. In government ethics codes, this means the language. In the case I will look at here, the devil's in the verbs. According to an article on the WTSP-TV website...
View ArticleThe Role of Motive in Government Ethics
A conflict situation in my state of Connecticut is instructive regarding a basic concept of government ethics, as well as a basic concept of legislative immunity. Legislators insist that they require...
View ArticleA Mother Helping Her Son, and Government "Ethics"
There is nothing more natural and, in most circumstances, ethical than a mother doing her best to help her son when he is in trouble. And yet, in most jurisdictions, there are multiple government...
View ArticleThe Problem with Limiting Conflicts to Pecuniary Benefits
Many people believe that conflicts of interest are limited to situations where money is involved. When these people write ethics laws, as they often do, the law effectively says that where money isn't...
View ArticleCan an Assistant County Attorney Sit on the Council of a City in the County?
According to an article last week in the Washington Post, the Fairfax County (VA) Attorney fired one of his office's assistant attorneys because she was elected to the council of a city within the...
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