City Related | City Ethics

January 2, 2011

Getting the Green Bay Ethics Program into the Super Bowl

The Green Bay Packers football team is going to try to win its game today in order to get to the playoffs and seek its first Super Bowl victory since 1996. Before 1996, the Packers hadn't won a Super Bowl since Vince Lombardi coached them there in 1967. An ethics board meeting is not quite a Super …

Conflicts of Interest December 29, 2010

A Local Government Association Board Member's Possible Conflicts

According to an article yesterday on seacoastonline.com, a committee of the Select Board of North Hampton, NH (pop. 4,500) brought to the Select Board its concern about the town administrator dealing with health insurance issues when he was on the board of the state's Local Government Center, a loc…

Ethics Commissions & Administration December 28, 2010

A Council-Controlled Ethics Process Can Be a Real Battle Ground

It is difficult to emphasize too much that council control over the ethics process is not only inappropriate and ineffective, but harmful. The first use of a new ethics ordinance in the aptly named Battle Ground, Washington (pop. 18,000) provides yet another example of the problems that may arise. …

Ethics Commissions & Administration December 27, 2010

Centralized vs. Disbursed Ethics Programs

Is discomfort with a centralized ethics program by various parts of a local government something that should stand in the way of creating one? According to an article in the New Haven Register last week, this has been suggested in a discussion by the board of selectmen of Madison, CT, a town about …

Conflicts of Interest December 24, 2010

Conflicts and Fraud

If "conflict of interest" were a cause of action, what would it be? A matter right in the small city next to my town answers this question, and gives a new angle by which to view conflicts. According to court documents cited (and linked to) by an article in the New Haven Register this week, in 2009…

December 23, 2010

A Miscellany

Government Executives and the Ethics Commission Selection Process Should government chief executives appoint ethics commission members or their staff? The common practice is that they usually do. But the common practice is not necessarily the best practice, especially when it puts a conflict of int…

December 22, 2010

Large Contracts, Bid Rigging, and Pension Boards in Detroit

What can local government ethics professionals learn from what has come out in the recent indictments of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his father, the city's director of water and sewerage, Kilpatrick's CAO and CIO, and a city contractor? According to the Detroit Free Press's time line, it…

Conflicts of Interest December 21, 2010

A Gift Exception That Undermines the Rule

My last blog post involved the Baltimore Employees' Retirement System board calling in an image consultant to help protect it from an investigation by the city's ethics board. This blog post will look at why there is an investigation (again, I could not find any minutes posted, so I am dependent on…

Local Government Practice December 21, 2010

The Image Consultant's Role in Local Government Ethics

Things have changed. It used to be that the first thing you did when you found out the local ethics commission was investigating you was hire a lawyer (which is itself a change from the days when you found out you were being investigated by the D.A. and handed him a bribe). In this era of the image…

December 20, 2010

A Miscellany

A Failure to Respond to an Ethics Complaint It's always interesting to see how many ways there are not to deal with ethics complaints. When you think you've seen them all, a new one comes out of nowhere. In this case, nowhere is Taylor, Michigan, a city of 65,000 outside Detroit. According to an ar…

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