<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/getting-green-bay-ethics-program-supe…; target="”_blank”">Last
month, I wrote</a> about how the Green Bay ethics board hadn't met much
more than the Packers had won Super Bowls. Well, now that the Packers
have won another, it's time for the ethics board to meet again (the
last time it met was in 1999).<br>
<br>

According to <a href="http://www.northjersey.com/news/114992909_Clifton_ruling_due_on_ethics_…; target="”_blank”">an
article in <i>The Record</i> this week</a>, a Clifton, New Jersey council
member is being accused of dealing irresponsibly with a conflict by
participating in a discussion about, although not voting on, the
reappointment of two members of the city's zoning board. The conflict

The U.S. is not the only country with a revolving-door problem. In
Japan, the problem is deeply institutionalized. It is as much a part of
the retirement system as pensions.<br>
<br>
But the Japanese name for the revolving door shows that not only does
the system work in a different
manner than ours, but that the Japanese have a different opinion of the
relative value of government and business. The name is <i>amakudari</i>, which means "descent

Last month, I did <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/mack-truck-exceptions-new-gift-provis…; target="”_blank”">a
blog
post</a> on the huge exceptions to <a href="http://www.flashpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/SB14-int.pdf&q…; target="”_blank”">Alabama's
new

According to <a href="http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/jan/31/guest-commentary-earmarked-v…; target="”_blank”">an
op-ed
piece by a county commissioner</a> from <a href="http://www.colliergov.net/&quot; target="”_blank”">Collier County, Florida</a> (in the
Naples <i>Daily News</i>), two interesting twists on the gift to an

In my recent blog posts about Gwinnett County, especially <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/gwinnett-county-ethics-reform-i-failu…; target="”_blank”">the
first</a>, I
spoke about how the problem of not following formal processes is a
serious government ethics problem, but is often not covered by ethics
codes. The Massachusetts Ethics Commission has recently entered into

This third of three posts on ethics reform in Gwinnett County, Georgia
looks at the county officials' response to the recommendations in <a href="http://www.cviog.uga.edu/services/assistance/gwinnett/report.pdf&quot; target="”_blank”">the
2007
report</a> drafted by the <a href="http://www.cviog.uga.edu/&quot; target="”_blank”">Carl

In this second of three blog posts on ethics reform in Gwinnett County,

The boom years of the Oughts were very good to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwinnett_County&quot; target="”_blank”">Gwinnett County</a>,
a
suburban Atlanta county of 800,000 that grew by a third in the last
decade. But boom times are rarely good for local government ethics, and
Gwinnett County appears to be no exception. A grand jury report
unsealed in
October (a searchable copy is attached; see below) found a series of

According to<a href="http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/featured-news/ethics-charges-have-been-…; target="”_blank”">
an article in Tuesday's Hartford <i>Advocate</i></a>, a complaint has been
filed with Hartford's ethics commission by a council member against the
former corporation counsel on the grounds that he had taken a job with