Type the word "ethics" into the<a href="http://www.birminghamal.gov/&quot; target="”_blank”">
Birmingham, AL website</a> search box and nothing comes up. Nor can you
find the city's ordinances. Mayor Larry Langford bills himself as a
great reformer, but he certainly hasn't done anything to reform the
city's ethics laws, or at least to let anyone know about them. In fact,
according to the City Ethics site, the ethics ordinance and board used

There are two principal ways of dealing with gifts to government
officials and employees, and both of them are unsatisfactory, although
certainly better than ignoring them completely. One approach is prohibition, the other disclosure.<br>

In Saybrook, IL, two members of both a sportman's club and a village
board of trustees resigned their sportman's club membership so they
would have no conflict voting on annexation of the club by the village.
According to <a href="http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/11/29/opinion/letters/134290.tx…; target="”_blank”">a
letter to the editor</a> of the Bloomington Pantagraph, the two members reserved

According to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/23/AR20081…; target="”_blank”">an
article in the Washington Post</a> this week, a politics professor,
David E. Lewis, looked at the Bush administration, comparing agencies
run by political appointees and those run by career bureaucrats.
Although the appointees tended to be better educated and very

A Nevada court found yesterday that the state ethics commission did not
have jurisdiction over a state senator on grounds of legislative immunity,
even though the state constitution has no Speech or Debate Clause. The
judge gave the senator a preliminary injuction to prevent his having to
appear before the ethics commission next week. No decision is available
yet, but the judge did say that the state constitution would have to be
amended for the ethics commission to have jurisdiction over a state
legislator.<br>

Gift disclosure and limitations are an important part of government
ethics. But rarely do we think of what gifts mean. Usually this goes
little further than politicians saying, "I can't be bought."<br>
<br>
But gifts aren't about buying. In fact, gifts are the opposite of

Most ethics codes effectively define a conflict of interest as a
conflict between an
official's personal financial interest and an official's obligation to the public interest. But this leaves out an enormous
number of personal interests, many of which are themselves financial,
including the financial interests of family members, business
associates, and favorite charities.<br>
<br>
Gift provisions often make it a violation for immediate family members

The NYC Campaign Finance Board has put together an excellent <a href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/doingbiz/home.html&quot; target="”_blank”">Doing Business
Database</a>, consisting of a searchable list of individuals (principal owners, principal officers, and senior managers of entities) “doing
business” with a wide assortment of city agencies and
quasi-governmental entities, including through contracts, bids or

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<cite>I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
<b>Thomas Jefferson</b></cite>

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Last month, <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/543&quot; target="”_blank”">I wrote</a>
about the conflict of interest that led credit agencies to ignore the
risk inherent in mortgage-backed securities. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/business/23citi.html&quot; target="”_blank”">A
front-page article</a> in today's New York Times shows how a different