Contractors and Vendors

A three-year FBI investigation of Cuyahoga County (which includes Cleveland) appears to have begun with a sting operation involving building inspectors, where an undercover agent offered bribes, and they were accepted, according to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer...

The two best defenses against dealing responsibly with a conflict are that the local government attorney told me it was okay, and I didn't know there was a conflict. The first can be dealt with by getting the local government attorney out of the government ethics picture. But the second requires something few local government ethics codes require: applicant disclosure.

“If Boss Tweed were alive today, he would be a placement agent.” So said New York's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, announcing a settlement with the Carlyle Group, by which the Carlyle Group, an outside investment manager for many government pension funds, will no longer hire placement agents to get public pension business and will greatly limit its officers' and employees' campaign contributions to anyone involved with public pensions (according to...

Updates below (latest on August 11, 2009)
There's an interesting situation in Colorado Springs. According to an article in yesterday's Colorado Springs Gazette, an ethics complaint filed against the city's weak mayor alleged that the mayor was an investment adviser to a developer...

Update below
An ethics emergency was declared in Corpus Christi on Tuesday, according to an article on the KIII TV website. During the final meeting of the council before the council membership changes post-election, the lame-duck council declared an ethics emergency in order to amend the ethics code (...

In Louisiana, local government officials cannot do any sort of business with anyone who does business with their local government. This position is supported by a settlement reached with an Alexandria council member, according to an article at thetowntalk.com. The charges are...