City Ethics | Breaking the oxymoron: "City Ethics"

Conflicts of Interest April 16, 2015

An Indirect Benefit to a State Official Regarding a County Contract

According to an article in today's New York Daily News, an investigation by the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has found that the son of the NY State Senate majority leader was a consultant for a company that won a county stormwater treatment contract in the majority leader's …

Conflicts of Interest April 13, 2015

Two from Chicago

Mixing Election Oversight and Professional Contracts According to an Illinois Business Times article on April 5, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners is chaired by an attorney whose law firm has received presumably no-bid contracts to lobby for city agencies, that is, contracts from the admi…

Resources & Learning April 6, 2015

Spring Reading: "Self-Deception" by Herbert Fingarette

I just read a classic work of philosophical psychology, Self-Deception (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), wherein Herbert Fingarette takes an interesting approach to a phenomenon common to politics, but which seems paradoxical and, therefore, difficult to understand. How can someone effectively lie to…

April 6, 2015

Safra Center for Ethics website: Jacksonville Referendum

March 30, 2015

Spring Reading: Corruption in America IV

This is the fourth of four blog posts on Zephyr Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press). Extortion and Pay to Play Teachout talks about the difference in the origins of bribery and extortion statutes, the firs…

March 30, 2015

Spring Reading: Corruption in America III

This is the third of four blog posts on Zephyr Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press). Other Anti-Corruption Laws Teachout is good at presenting laws as anti-corruption laws which are not usually considered t…

March 29, 2015

Spring Reading: Corruption in America II

This is the second of four blog posts on Zephyr Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press). A Culture of Gift Giving In the book's introduction, Teachout notes that, back in the 18th century, the idea of elected …

March 29, 2015

Spring Reading: Corruption in America I

This is the first of four blog posts in which I will look at Zephyr Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press), from a government ethics viewpoint. I have already reviewed Teachout's seventh chapter (which appear…

Ethics Commissions & Administration March 25, 2015

Dating and Minimum Requirements

An example I often use for why government ethics laws are only minimum requirements is that these laws cannot include friendships or romantic relationships, because these are impossible to define with any precision. When a relationship is not included because it is undefinable, this does not mean t…

March 23, 2015

A New Mayoral Charity in San Diego

According to an article yesterday on the Voice of San Diego website, yet another mayoral pet charity has been created in San Diego, called One San Diego. The article by Liam Dillon notes that, although the mayor and his wife have no official or financial relationship with the charity, they are very…

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