Recusal/Withdrawal

Explaining a political decision on the basis of government ethics, when that really isn't the reason, can lead to government ethics reform made on the basis of politics. That's what appears to have happened in Boerne (TX), a small "city" of 6,000 residents outside San Antonio.

John Hazlehurst's observation on the Colorado Springs ethics commission's dismissal of a complaint against the mayor is valuable enough to deserve a separate blog post, rather than a mere update to my original post on this topic.

An important issue involved the mayor's insistence that, as an investment adviser, he could...

Chicago politicians are endlessly creative. A few weeks ago I wrote about an alderman on the zoning committee who pushed for zoning changes to help developers who used his wife as their realtor. It turns out that his boss, William J. P. Banks, head of the zoning committee, is going to have a retirement party. The party's guests are being asked to send personal checks for $200 (or more), according to...

Again, a very public federal conflict of interest matter provides valuable material relevant to local government ethics. This time it's former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr.'s relationship with the firm he formerly headed, Goldman Sachs, the subject of a front-page story in Sunday's New York Times.

Update below (August 10, 2009):
When an official has a conflict of interest, the usual course is to withdraw from any discussion or vote on the matter. But this is not always the case. Sometimes a conflict of interest requires that a responsible official speak up.

The great majority of local governments that think they have no state or local law or rules regarding local officials' conflicts of interest do actually have a conflict of interest rule.

This rule is hidden in Robert's Rules, which is usually the set of rules under which local government bodies operate. Here is what it says in §45 (Voting Procedure), in the first subsection on Rights and Obligations in Voting (I'm quoting from the Perseus Publishing tenth edition, pp.394-395):