It's been four months since my latest update on San Bernardino County's failure to follow grand jury ethics reform recommendations with any action. An op-ed piece by Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, in this week's San Bernardino Sun calls for campaign contribution limits (there are currently none at all), a prohibition on off-year fundraising, disclosure requirements, and an ethics commission to enforce the law.

The Grants of a Conflicted Board of Insiders
Sometimes conflicts can cause a city or county serious problems with such things as state and federal grants. This is what has happened in Brockton, MA (pop. 94,000), according to an article in the Enterprise-News.

The board of the city's redevelopment organization, Building a Better Brockton (BBB), which oversees state and federal grants, has several members with direct connections to companies seeking money from BBB. Those members include two bankers, two local business owners, and the directors of the local housing authority, health center, business association, and YMCA. They are expected to resign soon.

EC Jurisdiction Over Independent Agencies: The Charter's the Answer
In Jacksonville, where City Ethics' president, Carla Miller, is the ethics officer, the charter revision commission unanimously voted to give the city's ethics commission jurisdiction over all the city's independent agencies, according to an article in yesterday's Daily Record.

Update: February 5, 2010 (see below)

Here's an interesting dual position question, that is, a question involving one individual holding two government positions. The most important conflict involved in dual positions is that you cannot consistently fulfill your fiduciary obligations to one constituency while fulfilling your obligations to the other. See my blog post on state-local dual positions for a discussion of more possible dual-position conflicts.

Update: February 3, 2010 (see below)

A NC Local Government Blog post yesterday made me aware that there have recently been some very public conflict of interest issues involving North Carolina's alcoholic beverage control (ABC) system, the state liquor sales program, which allows each city and county to have a local alcoholic beverage control board and employees (163 boards in all).

As I mentioned in a recent blog post, the Broward County (FL; home of Ft. Lauderdale) commissioners are seeking to have an ethics code (enforced by an inspector general; it's being drafted) apply to county employees, as well. For some reason, this not only must go to referendum, but must also be approved by a majority each of state senators and representatives whose constituency touches on Broward County.

According to an article last week in the Sun-Sentinel, things started looking bad when some of these state legislators spoke their concerns at a state delegation hearing. They appear to have been most concerned about the IG's powers, especially the power to act on his or her own initiative, with independence and little oversight. The usual politicians' fear of lack of control.