It appears that Jackson County (MO) legislators will allow the county
ethics commission to have jurisdiction over them, after a very ugly
series of incidents, including the <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/608&quot; target="”_blank”">resignation of the entire
ethics commission</a> and the <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/674&quot; target="”_blank”">false presentation</a> of

For a year and a half, in her <a href="http://lawoftheland.wordpress.com/category/ethics/&quot; target="”_blank”">Law of the
Land blog</a>, <a href="http://www.albanylaw.edu/sub.php?navigation_id=157&user_id=64&quot; target="”_blank”">Patricia
Salkin</a> has been writing about local government ethics issues in

One thing that keeps striking me about the recent decisions in the
legislative immunity cases relating to government ethics is how
little they attempt to distinguish cases outside the ethics field from
these cases in the ethics field.<br>
<br>
Is government ethics no different from criminal prosecution, no
different from civil suits?<br>
<br>

Here's a short opinion piece by Walter Dellinger, head of the Office of
Legal Counsel under Pres. Clinton. It's part of a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/01/AR20090…; target="”_blank”">series
of such pieces</a> that will appear in tomorrow's Washington <span>Post. </span>The opinions concern what

Last month, <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/696&quot; target="”_blank”">I wrote</a>
about problems involving municipal bond sales and advice in Tennessee.
Yesterday, the state comptroller wrote <a href="http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/apr/30/guest-column-meltdown-…; target="”_blank”">a guest column</a> explaining what

Two days ago, <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/726&quot; target="”_blank”">I wrote</a>
about a Chicago Heights (IL) situation where two council members who
work under a third council member were in a position to vote for their
boss to be the city's mayor. A suit brought by a group of local

I listened yesterday to the testimony of Kevin Powers, a member of the Nevada
Legislative Counsel's office, to the House Committee considering the

The Nevada legislature is really going out of its way to make sure that
its members, and no one else in the state, is protected by legislative
immunity with respect to the state ethics commission. For a body that
was afraid, without a court's blessing, to exclude its members from the
state ethics commission's jurisdiction (to the extent a member is
involved in legislative activity), it does not seem afraid, even before
the appellate opinion in its legislative immunity case has been

Recently, the Connecticut Task Force on Municipal Ethics discussed <a href="http://www.cga.ct.gov/gae/METF/DRAFT%202008%20Muni%20Ethics%20Task%20Fo…; target="”_blank”">a
draft report</a>. Neither in the report, nor in <a href="http://www.cga.ct.gov/gae/METF/doc/022009TASKFORCE.pdf&quot; target="”_blank”">the

Electing local government employees to local government office can
cause problems. There are constitutional protections against forbidding
it, but there are conflict of interest arguments against doing it.<br>
<br>
According to <a href="http://www.southtownstar.com/news/1549021,042909chmayor.article&quot; target="”_blank”">an