Recusal/Withdrawal

Note: When I originally wrote this blog post, I erroneously assumed that the ethics commission member whose conflict situation I discuss was the only one selected by the assembly speaker. I since learned that three of the members were selected by the assembly speaker. I would argue, therefore, that these three members are in the same situation (except for the personal opinion expressed about someone who would presumably be involved in the matter). With a fourteen-member commission, the...

Canadian mayors don't appear to be having a good time of it lately, ethicswise. Montreal's mayor resigned, Toronto's mayor was dismissed by a judge, and now it looks like the conflict situations of Winnipeg's mayor will be his downfall if he runs for a fourth term, according to...

Between the American Thanksgiving holiday and throwing out my back so that I couldn't sit at my computer, I missed one of the most fascinating stories of the year:  a judicial dismissal of Toronto's mayor for a conflict of interest violation. The conflict situation was minor, but the way the mayor handled it and the way Toronto's ethics...

News from British Columbia provides strong evidence of how difficult it is for anyone to deal with his own conflict situation, even a government ethics professional. No one should think that it is easy for someone to see an appearance of impropriety relating to himself or to respond to a conflict allegation against him in anything but a personal manner. A government ethics program must facilitate the process of dealing responsibly with a conflict situation by allowing, or even requiring,...

With the frequent confusion of person and office, sometimes it's not that easy to tell the difference between a gift to a local government agency and a gift to its director. This confusion can open an agency director to accusations of ethical misconduct.

This is what has happened in Baltimore. According to an article in the...

I recently wrote a blog post about a situation where a citizen asked an ethics commission for ethics advice when council members failed to do so and, despite the corporation counsel's suggestion that it provide the advice, the ethics commission refused to provide it.

In this post, I would like to consider the matter about which the citizen sought advice. The matter involved the...