I recently wrote <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/advice-ethics-advice-falls-deaf-ears&…; target="”_blank”">a blog post</a> about a situation where a citizen asked
an ethics commission for ethics advice when council members failed
to do so and, despite the corporation counsel's suggestion that it provide the advice,
the ethics commission refused to provide it.<br>
<br>

One conflict that is difficult to deal with in an ethics code, but
which comes up again and again, is the conflict situation that arises
when a local government official sits on a regional board or holds
another office that has a different constituency than the one he was
elected or appointed to represent.<br>
<br>
This issue arose a few days ago, when an attorney hired by the

Last week, a resident from one of the towns next to mine (Wallingford, CT) called me
for advice regarding his request for an advisory opinion. The
request involved the appropriateness of council members affiliated
with a church participating in a matter that involved funding for
renovation of a wall along the church's parking lot. This is a difficult conflict situation, but some town officials made it much more complicated than it had to be. Not only did
the ethics board, mayor, and council show a lack of understanding of

<br>I don't talk much in this blog or in my book <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/ethics%20book&quot; target="”_blank”"><i>Local Government
Ethics Programs</i></a> about character. However, there is another approach to
government ethics that is sometimes referred to as "the character
approach." For example, the <a href="http://josephsoninstitute.org/">Josephson

<b>Update:</b> October 10, 2012 (see below)<br>
<br>
So far, I have ignored this year's most famous local ethics
proceeding, against San Francisco sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. The reason
I ignored it is the reason I am writing about it now:  I think
the proceeding should have been dismissed because the sheriff's misconduct
involved neither a conflict of interest nor his official duties.<br>
<br>
The fact that the complaint was brought by the mayor against an

It's valuable to put government ethics in the larger context of the
use of public office for private purposes that does not involve a
financial benefit for anyone. In other words, much of politics is
personal. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/books/review/subversives-by-seth-rose…; target="”_blank”">A
review in this weekend's New York <i>Times Book Review</i></a> got me

It was very refreshing to hear Ann Arbor council member Steven
Kunselman, in <a href="http://a2ethics.org/podcasts/city-local-ethics-podcast-series/getting-g…; target="”_blank”">an

When a mayor replaces an entire ethics commission, it usually means
that he is taking over control of the city's ethics program, to protect himself and his allies. This
doesn't appear to be the case in Chicago, where today Mayor Emmanuel
replaced ethics board members whose terms had ended or were about to
end, and whose other members had been asked to resign, according to

One of the most important ways of preventing ethical misconduct
usually does not appear in an ethics code, because it does not involve a
traditional conflict of interest. I am referring to non-legislative
roles played by local legislators, especially roles that enable them
to create a pay-to-play environment. These roles are played in the two
principal areas where ethical misconduct occurs:  procurement
and land use decisions.<br>
<br>
In past blog posts, I have focused on

According to <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21563351&quot; target="”_blank”">an
article in last week's <i>Economist</i></a>, last year 22 local councils in
Italy were disbanded and taken over by the
national government due to alleged infiltration by organized crime.
This is an extreme way to deal with a poor local government ethics
environment. But it's a very difficult problem for a local government to deal with.<br>