<a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-d…; target="”_blank”">The
Dallas <i>Morning News</i> on Wednesday</a> ran a fascinating article about
Dallas County's district attorney. It caught my interest because he was
accused of a conflict of interest, but accusing this district attorney

There's a lot to learn from the chief of New Orleans' emergency medical
service's past conflicts of interest, which have only recently become
public. Despite the compassion one must feel for the official, the
conflicts were poorly handled by her and by the former mayor and his administration.<br>
<br>
According to <a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/09/post_363.html&quot; target="”_blank”">an

<br>
There's a new twist to the ethics mess in Stamford, which I described
in <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/stamford-ethics-controversy-involving…; target="”_blank”">a

<b>Note:</b> This blog post was posted on September 22, and I accidentally deleted it. This is a reposting.<br>
<br>
What
is recusal? More to the point, does the act of recusal require merely
inaction,
or action, or action and words? This has become an issue in the city of
Santa
Fe, but it is important to establish a definition for the purpose of
government
ethics.<br>
<br>

I've written several blog posts about the criminal trials of a
Baltimore
council member and the former Baltimore mayor, focusing on their
successful legislative immunity defenses (<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/463">1</a&gt; <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/problematic-baltimore-legislative-imm…;

In the Indiana Secretary of State race, the headlines are all about
voter
fraud. But the bigger problem, I think, involves the failure of one of
the candidates to differentiate himself from his seat on the Fishers
city council.<br>
<br>

Three years ago, <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/284&quot; target="”_blank”">I
featured Memphis in a blog post</a>, noting that, in the last six
years,
66 government officials, employees, and contractors had been found guilty of
various sorts of government-related crimes. Last year, <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/816&quot; target="”_blank”">I noted that the city's

Many jurisdictions have a rule that disallows the filing of an ethics
complaint against an elected official within so many days before an
election. The purpose of such a rule is to prevent the abuse of the
ethics process for political purposes. But is this the best
solution to this problem?<br>
<br>

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/do-ethics-commissions-have-jurisdicti…; target="”_blank”">Two days ago, I wrote</a> about a Louisiana lawyer-legislator who is arguing
that disclosure rules should not apply to lawyers, because the practice
of law is regulated by the state supreme court. The story behind an
indictment in New Jersey this week makes a strong argument for applying

<b>Update:</b> October 15, 2010 (see below)<br>
<br>
Decision-makers are given too much credit. Most individuals who vote on
government matters are non-professionals who are paid little or
nothing, and who rarely focus on the matters before their body. They
are, therefore, very dependent on staff members who are professionally
trained and who are paid to focus on the matters before the body.<br>
<br>