While on the subject of pension boards in California, it's worth
mentioning a new California bill, <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_1551-1600/ab_1584_bill_…; target="”_blank”">Bill
1584</a>, signed into law on October 18. It is an amendment to the
County Employees Retirement Law of 1937 (Section 22212.5 of the
Education Code, Sections 20098 and 31528 of the Government Code, with

It's been over three years since <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/124&quot; target="”_blank”">I wrote</a> about the
conflict situation of San Diego's pension board. Its members were
selected by the city government labor unions and by the city, and they
worked for the city. When an increase in their retirement benefits was
explicitly tied to their approval of a reduction in contributions to

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/council-fiefdoms-and-unethical-behavi…; target="”_blank”">Dallas
council members' control</a> over development in their districts led
earlier this month to the<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/extortion-convictions-dallas-fascinat…; target="”_blank”">

According to <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-ignores-ethics-rule-171424.html&quot; target="”_blank”">an
article</a> in this week's Atlanta <i>Journal-Constitution</i>, a rule
prohibiting Georgia state employees from accepting gifts over $25 is
not being enforced. At all.<br>
<br>
How does the paper know these gifts are being made? Because lobbyists

<br>
<b>Update:</b> November 11, 2009 (see below)<br>
<br>
Is there any worse way to skirt government ethics rules and misuse
public money and position than via a charitable organization? And yet
it
happens again and again. This time it happened in Baltimore, according

This week, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox <a href="http://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,1607,7-164-34739-225122--,00.html&quot; target="”_blank”">announced</a>
a "toolbox" for local governments to create local ethics policies.
Local government ethics is already governed by state statutes, but
local governments can apparently supplement these rules with local laws and ethics

Here are two interesting local government ethics case studies from
matters in the news this week.<br>
<br>
<b>A Job Can Effectively Be a Gift</b><br>
According to <a href="http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/oct/22/in-brief-woman-reports-rap…; target="_blank">an
article in the <i>Spokesman-Review</i></a>,

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/legal-defense-funds-misuse-office-and…
talked</a> about legal defense funds in the past as a way to accept
large gifts from those doing business with a local government, but I
referred, tangentially, to only one local government legal
defense fund, <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/411">that of

Possibly the most valuable annual local government ethics resource was
published this morning:  Patricia Salkin's <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1493502">2009 Ethical
Considerations in Land Use</a>, a 28-page summary of reported cases and

Can grades be evidence of a conflict of interest? This is what the Cook
County prosecutor's office is effectively arguing, according to <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-alvarez-first-yearoct20,0,393695…
article in the Chicago <i>Tribune</i></a>. <br>
<br>
Northwestern University journalism students spent three years
researching a criminal case, in which they believe that a man was