City Related

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A city creates the position of inspector general in order to root out,
and hopefully prevent, corruption. The inspector general decides to
investigate a situation. A city attorney is involved. The
attorney-client privilege is invoked. The investigation is blocked. And
the word goes out:  if you want to hide your corrupt conduct,
involve a city attorney. It's that simple.<br>
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<b>Update</b>: April 29, 2010 (see below)<br>
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The idea of a possible conflict of interest should not be an excuse for
a fishing expedition to find relationships between local government
legislators and people or contracts they vote on. This appears to be
what is happening in Crossville, a town of 9,000 in east-central
Tennessee.<br>
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Gray areas in local government ethics don't necessarily have to be gray
areas.<br>
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According to <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/councilman-says-hell-vote-467804.html&q…; target="”_blank”">an
article last week in the Atlanta <i>Journal-Constitution</i></a>, a council
member whose brother is a lieutenant in the city jail has been very

Back in Chicago, where in February the mayor called for the inspector
general (appointed by the mayor) to have jurisdiction over the city
council (see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/camels-back-truly-broken-or-just-more…; target="”_blank”">my
blog post</a>), the council is now moving toward a council-wide vote on
its own inspector general.<br>
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In the hands of politicians, government ethics can be wielded as a
double-edged sword, as can be seen in recent events in Mandeville (LA),
a city of 12,000 just across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.<br>
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Local governments accepting gifts from those who do business with them
— contractors, developers, and the like — can cause some serious
problems, even when they have to be approved by neutral bodies. This
can be seen by what has happened in Middletown, CT, a small city not
far from where I live.<br>
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The mayor of a city of 46,000 people announces that the city would
change its policy requiring annexation to obtain water and sewer
service, and then negotiates an agreement with a developer to provide
him with utilities. In the middle of the negotiations, the developer
gives the mayor's campaign a $10,000 contribution. An ethics

Ethics charges are often not the end, but rather the beginning of a
process to improve government ethics. Take a recent instance in Los
Angeles.<br>
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One of the biggest differences between unethical conduct and criminal
conduct by government officials is the matter of proving intent. For
example, a bribe is nothing more than a gift to a government official
where it has been proven that the official intentionally took a gift in return for certain conduct. In government ethics, taking a gift beyond a certain value is all that needs to be proven to show misconduct. The official's conduct, beyond accepting the gift, is
irrelevant, as is the official's intent.<br>
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Government lawyers enjoy exceptions to transparency laws. Should they
also be excepted from government ethics laws? Atlanta senior assistant
city attorney Robert N. Godfrey thinks so, according to <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/board-puts-attorneys…
article in yesterday's Atlanta <i>Journal-Constitution</i></a>.<br>
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