If you're a city of a quarter million people with an ethics board that
“has not met in many years and ... is effectively non-existent,”
according to a council member who has proposed a new ethics ordinance,
what do you do?<br>
<br>
Not, I think, what <a href="http://www.cityoffortwayne.org/images/stories/clerk/Introduction_-_July…; target="”_blank”">the
proposed

I hate to see people resign with statements such as this, as typical as they are:
<ul>
While I have been assured that I have violated no existing code,
ordinance or statute, I cannot permit my integrity — and, by
insinuation, Councilwoman Hermann’s — to be attacked.</ul>
Sadly, these are the words of a former Kansas City (MO) ethics

It's important to be careful when it comes to conflicts of interest,
but it's also important not to be <i>too</i> careful. When you're too careful,
you send the wrong message to members of the community and you
miseducate them about government ethics.<br>
<br>
This is what happened this week in my own town of North Haven,
Connecticut.

<br>
There are many ways to get ethics reform going (the Lone Ranger being out of fashion outside of New York State), but the choices are
different in different states, and it's hard to know which one is best
or most practicable for a particular community. <a href="http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-07-13/story/ethics-reform-could…; target="”_blank”">An
article

There's <a href="http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07/13/2333236/embry-texas-gop-dems-us…; target="”_blank”">a
good
opinion piece</a> by Austin <i>American-Statesman</i> columnist Jason
Embry this week on the political use of ethics complaints. The
instances of abuse of the ethics process is what has led many
jurisdictions to prohibit any mention of filing an ethics complaint and

Here's an interesting modern spin on an old-fashioned nepotism/conflict
of interest matter. According to <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/98382569.html&quot; target="”_blank”">an article
in Tuesday's Milwaukee <i>Journal-Sentinel</i></a>, the husband of a member of
a charter school's board was hired to teach at the charter school, and
there is disagreement over whether there is a conflict or not.<br>

A failure to deal responsibly with one's conflicts of interest has
ramifications beyond the loss of public trust, and all the serious
problems that arise from this loss. This failure can also lead to
litigation and the overturning of actions by local government officials.<br>
<br>
A good example of this can be seen in the case of <a href="http://www.state.wv.us/wvsca/docs/Spring10/35274.htm&quot; target="”_blank”">Rissler v.

<b>A Poor Approach to Being Ethical</b><br>
It's great when candidates talk up acting ethically. But it's going too
far, and setting a bad precedent, when a candidate takes a lie-detector
test in which he says that he never engaged in unethical activities in
private- or public-sector work, <a href="http://moultrieobserver.com/local/x1671040400/Candidate-takes-lie-detec…; target="”_blank”">as

I recently wrote <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/false-statements-elections&quot; target="”_blank”">a
blog post about a false statements in elections law</a> in Ohio, and
the problems with enforcing such laws. I have often written about the
problems with self-enforcement of ethics laws. In the Wisconsin case of
a state supreme court justice's misrepresentations in an election ad, the two

There's an interesting issue at the heart of a judicial inquiry into
possible misconduct by the mayor of Mississauga, Ontario. The council
sought the inquiry to “investigate any supposed breach of trust or
other misconduct of a Member of Council, an employee of the
municipality or person having a contract with the municipality” and to
inquire into “any matter connected with the good government of the
municipality or the conduct of any part of its public business." In