MO Municipal Ticket Fixing Systems
More from St. Louis County municipalities. According to an article in Sunday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, several of these municipalities — with the connivance of municipal court judges, local...
View ArticleWhat a Conflicted Council Candidate Should Do
It is important for local government candidates who have serious conflicts of interest to let the community (not just voters in their district) know how they will deal with the conflicts if they are...
View ArticleAn End-of-Year Miscellany
Call for a State Municipal Lobbying Code It may be a big holiday week and the end of the year, but there has still been some news on the government ethics front. The Boston Globe has called for the...
View ArticleContingency Fees and Lobbying and Contracting with Attorneys General
There is a lot of disagreement over whether contingency fee arrangements between client and lobbyist should be permitted. Many cities, counties, and states prohibit arrangements where lobbyists are...
View ArticleLobbying City and County Attorneys
There is a front-page article in the New York Times today about the recent increase in lobbying and entertaining state attorneys general (AGs), as well as in campaign contributions from businesses who...
View ArticleCA Appellate Court Protects EC Legal Advice on the Basis of Privilege
The logic of a California appellate decision on Monday, in the case of St. Croix v. Superior Court (A140308, July 28, 2014) (attached; see below), doesn't seem right to me. It skips steps. St. Croix is...
View ArticleOakland Council Proposes Ethics Reform Charter Amendment
According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle last week, Oakland's council approved an amendment to the city charter, to go before voters in November, that would increase the authority of the...
View ArticleIf Fiduciary Duty Governs Financial Advice, Why Not Ethics Advice and...
One of the great things about discussions of the conflicts of interest of people in the securities world is that "fiduciary duty" is considered the basis for the rules that govern their relationship...
View ArticleIssues Arising from Auctioning Official's Purchase of Property at Foreclosure
There are three interesting issues in this one minor matter, involving a Louisiana sheriff's purchase of a house at a foreclosure sale handled by the sheriff's office.The Application of Ethics Laws to...
View ArticleThe Wrong Kind of Ethics Reform in Park Ridge, IL
Ethics reform can take the oddest forms, especially when those doing it put on blinders and consider nothing but the situation before them, thereby failing to consider best practices or, in fact, the...
View ArticleOrange County, NY Grand Jury Ethics Reform Recommendations
Another day, another grand jury report recommending government ethics reform. This report (attached; see below) comes from Orange County, NY, a county northwest of New York City, whose biggest town is...
View ArticleBroward County (FL) Ethics Reform Talk: Gifts and Advice
According to an article this week in the Sun-Sentinel, the Broward County, FL commission is discussing changes to the countywide ethics program, focusing on gifts and ethics advice.Gift Bans...
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 ArticleSpring Reading: The Government Ethics Adviser As Civics Teacher
"'Public Service Must Begin at Home': The Lawyer as Civics Teacher in Everyday Practice" by Bruce A. Green and Russell G. Pearce (William & Mary Law Review, Vol. 50, p. 1207, 2009) provides an...
View ArticleCounty Attorney Defends Anti-Transparency Rule in Ethics Program
In most cities and counties throughout the United States, the city or county attorney is in charge of the government ethics program. I have written a great deal about why this is not a best practice,...
View ArticleWinter Reading: Robert Dahl's "Who Governs?"
I just finished reading the classic political science book Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City by Robert A. Dahl (Yale University Press, 1961). It might have been the second time...
View ArticleGovernment Lawyers: Function or Membership?
"Why hire a lawyer to do an internal investigation? It’s because you get the privileges. Otherwise, you’d save a little money and hire a consultant or accountant." These are the wise words of Bruce A....
View ArticleArguments Against Centralized Ethics Advice Argue for It
A month ago, I wrote a blog post about the Broward County (FL) inspector general's recommendations for ethics reform. A principal recommendation was to require all local officials, who are under the...
View ArticleA Miscellany
City Attorney Ethics Enforcement in San FranciscoAn article in the San Francisco Chronicle this week says that the city attorney filed a lawsuit against a former member of the board of supervisors (the...
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...
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