Gifts

On January 28, the New York State Bar Association issued a report on government ethics reform in New York State, which includes a section on local government ethics reform. The report points out the many inadequacies of...

Last month, I wrote about how the Green Bay ethics board hadn't met much more than the Packers had won Super Bowls. Well, now that the Packers have won another, it's time for the ethics board to meet again (the last time it met was in 1999).

One thing Green Bay and Pittsburgh officials have in common is their payment for face-value Super Bowl tickets. You may wonder what is...

Last month, I did a blog post on the huge exceptions to Alabama's new gift provisions (pp. 24-26). What I didn't note was the similarities, and the gulf, between the bribery provision in Alabama's constitution and the gift provisions in the old and new statutes, and how this has...

According to an op-ed piece by a county commissioner from Collier County, Florida (in the Naples Daily News), two interesting twists on the gift to an official's favorite charity gambit occurred recently. Gifts to officials' favorite charities are a common way to get around pay-to-play laws. Here is what...

Sometimes a conflict situation makes you take a fresh look at common ethics provisions. This is true of a matter that has arisen in Poughkeepsie, New York (pronounced Pah-kip'-see), home of Vassar College, according to an article in Tuesday's Poughkeepsie Journal.

The provision in question is...

There are several problems with Houston's new ethics provisions, in addition to what I pointed out in my last blog post. Some of them are typical, some of them are unusual. The ethics reform ordinance is attached; see below; the old ethics ordinance can be found by clicking here and scrolling down on the left to Code of Ordinances Chapter 18).