City Related

Your big brother is a powerful member of city council, and you're just
a deputy city clerk. There's got to be more than this! So you retire,
take your pension of $68,000, and run for state representative, with
all the support your brother and his friends can provide, adding
another $86,000 in salary and the prospect of a second government
pension. Not bad.<br>
<br>
But not enough. You set up a lobbying firm, "to help businesses engage"
with the city, and you let your partner engage with the state, since

It's only been six weeks since <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/campaign-finance-suit-san-diego&quot; target="”_blank”">I wrote</a> about a campaign finance suit in
San Diego, filed by the Republican
Party of San Diego County, a former City Council candidate, a
pro-business group, a union PAC, and a pollster. Yesterday the federal

<b>The Grants of a Conflicted Board of Insiders</b><br>
Sometimes conflicts can cause a city or county serious
problems with such things as state and federal grants. This is what has
happened in <a href="http://www.brockton.ma.us/Default1.aspx&quot; target="”_blank”">Brockton,
MA</a> (pop.

Misuse of government resources, nepotism, transparency, and the
obligations of government attorneys are all issues in litigation over a
village's secret use of a contaminated well for 20% of the village's
water supply, according to <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-0214-crestwood-legal-bi…; target="”_blank”">an
article

Last week, according to <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-daley-city-hiring-20100…; target="”_blank”">an
article
in the Chicago <i>Tribune</i></a>, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley
responded to the conviction of yet another alderman by proposing (i)
that the Inspector General's office oversee the city's hiring program

<b>EC Jurisdiction Over Independent Agencies: The Charter's the Answer</b><br>
In Jacksonville, where City Ethics' president, Carla Miller, is the
ethics officer, the charter revision commission unanimously voted to
give the city's ethics
commission jurisdiction over all the city's independent agencies,
according to <a href="http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com/showstory.php?Story_id=530258">an

Some situations clearly involve a conflict of interest, but are not
dealt with in a local government ethics code. Two issues arise. One is
the quality of the local government ethics code. The other is whether
the code matters at all, if the conflict is clear.<br>
<br>
Such a situation exists with respect to a council member in Bellevue, WA, a Seattle suburb, with the extra twist that the city's ethics code applies to employees, and the state ethics code applies to council members.<br>
<br>

I've been remiss at covering the complex battles that have gone on in
and around the San Francisco ethics commission. I did, however, start a piece in
August 2009, which I have appended to this one, with an update.<br>
<br>
According to <a href="http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/2010/02/10/joe-lynn-memorial-to…; target="”_blank”">an

Time is a very important element of conflicts of interest. Some
conflicts simply exist, but others either occur suddenly or suddenly
become relevant.<br>
<br>
For example, an official can have a piece of property for twenty years
and then suddenly the owner of a neighboring piece of property asks the local
government to help turn it into something that would significantly raise the
value of the official's property.
That's an easy to problem to deal
with.<br>
<br>

It's been almost two years since the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/nyregion/28council.html&quot; target="”_blank”">New
York <i>Times</i> broke the story</a> on the abuses of New York City council
earmarks slush fund, which totaled about $50 million a year. This week, the
council member featured in the <i>Times</i> article was expelled from the