County Related

Lobbyists, lawmakers, and charitable fundraising form a triangle that is both virtuous and harmful.

Community leaders like to be identified with charitable groups, and charitable groups like to be identified with community leaders. It's a natural combination. But what is not natural, or even easy to see, is the line between charitable fundraising and campaign fundraising, when lobbyists, contractors, and developers enter into the picture.

The typical problem involves a mayor's...

Here's a difficult case involving a board of education's attorney.

The board of education in a wealthy, medium-sized Connecticut town is represented by a large law firm that represents 80 boards of education across the state (half the state's total). That same firm is representing a developer that is suing the town's planning and zoning commission, and it appears to be a controversial matter.

There is no doubt that the state's rules of professional conduct allow a firm to...

Understatement: After one county district attorney recused himself from prosecuting the man who hired him for his job, the neighboring county district attorney accepted the case, despite the fact that he leased office space and had accepted a thousand-dollar campaign contribution from the suspect's nephew, who happened to be listed as the suspect's defense attorney. 'To suggest that that's a conflict of interest is to suggest that I have an integrity problem, which is simply not the...

It is difficult to be an ethical politician or administrator, or even a citizen, without a basic understanding of logic. It is also difficult to appreciate others' unethical conduct without a basic understanding of logic.

By logic I do not mean the opposite of irrationality, but rather critical thinking, and specifically an understanding of logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are probably the most frequent form of unethical conduct in municipal government. They involve the conscious...

My blog entries must often seem like attacks on business interests. One reason is that conflicts are usually about personal financial interests conflicting with a government official's obligations to the public, and our democratic values require that the official's fiduciary obligations take precedence. And where there are financial interests, there are usually businesses.

But that is not always the case. Obligations themselves can conflict, without any direct financial interest. The...

Some towns have proximity rules, that is, rules that require officials to recuse themselves from any matter dealing with property within a certain distance of property they own or rent. But it is hard to have a set number of feet or yards. A distance appropriate to an urban environment is very different from one appropriate to a rural environment.

There are considerations to balance here. On one side, there is the good of making ethical guidance as clear as possible. On the other side...