City Related

Last week, the Houston council passed a number of amendments to its
ethics ordinance. They were billed as a big step forwards, but I do not
agree. In this post, I will look at what people have been saying about
the reforms and how the role of the ethics commission has changed. In
the next post I will take a critical look at the new provisions.<br>
<br>

<a href="http://www.paytoplaylawblog.com/2011/01/articles/lay-of-the-land-2011/#…; target="”_blank”">This
week, the Pay to Play Law Blog</a> took a snapshot of the status of
pay-to-play laws across the country, breaking them down into four
categories:  jurisdictions that impose significant restrictions,
including debarment; jurisdictions that require disclosure;
jurisdictions with limited requirements; and jurisdictions that are

Insurance is a big area for abuse in local government. It usually
constitutes a sizeable dollar percentage of a town's contracts, and an
insurance broker who works in government can use his or her position to
get the insurance business of companies that do or want to do business
with the town. And insurance is an area few people understand, and
which no department, office, or board may be responsible for overseeing.<br>
<br>

One of the most effective ways to create a good ethics environment is
by telling the full story of the bad ethics environment that preceded
it. If someone or, better, a number of people, have the courage and
integrity to not only admit publicly to what they and their colleagues did, but to tell it like a story, a group story, it will have a cathartic effect.
It will cleanse the community and act as a point where everything is
in the open and continues to be in the open. It will make it easier for

You can
learn something from every local government ethics code there is, and especially from codes that have only been proposed. Today I'm going to look at a
proposed ethics code for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Ellyn,_Illinois&quot; target="”_blank”">Glen Ellyn, IL</a>,
a western suburb of Chicago (pop. 27,000). The proposed code
and resolution are attached; see below.<br>
<br>

This second blog post on the briefs filed concerning whether the
Carrigan case should be accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court glances at
arguments in the briefs filed by the two parties and then makes a different argument for why the First Amendment has no place in this sort of government ethics matter. Making this argument gets to the root of how the Constitution, and government ethics, protect the public. If only the courts would let the Constitution and government ethics work together, as they should, instead of placing them at loggerheads.<br>
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It not only takes a number of officials to allow unethical conduct to
occur, it also takes a number of officials to undermine the effect of a
good ethics program. An ugly example occurred recently in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Providence,_RI">North
Providence, Rhode Island</a>, a city where three former council members

Bullheadedness is unprofessional, at least in most professions. By
"bullheadedness," I mean doing what you want no matter whether a
professional tells you not to do it or whether your boss tells you not
to do it, even if they tell you why and they are clearly right.<br>
<br>
One of the professions where bullheadedness is somewhat acceptable is

The Green Bay Packers football team is going to try to win its game
today in order to get to the playoffs and seek its first Super Bowl
victory since 1996. Before 1996, the Packers hadn't won a Super Bowl
since
Vince Lombardi coached them there in 1967.<br>
<br>
An ethics board meeting is not quite a Super Bowl, but Green Bay's

According to <a href="http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101228/NEWS/…; target="”_blank”">an
article yesterday on seacoastonline.com</a>, a committee of the Select
Board of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hampton,_Nh&quot; target="”_blank”">North