According to <a href="http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/jan/31/guest-commentary-earmarked-v…; target="”_blank”">an
op-ed
piece by a county commissioner</a> from <a href="http://www.colliergov.net/&quot; target="”_blank”">Collier County, Florida</a> (in the
Naples <i>Daily News</i>), two interesting twists on the gift to an

In my recent blog posts about Gwinnett County, especially <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/gwinnett-county-ethics-reform-i-failu…; target="”_blank”">the
first</a>, I
spoke about how the problem of not following formal processes is a
serious government ethics problem, but is often not covered by ethics
codes. The Massachusetts Ethics Commission has recently entered into

This third of three posts on ethics reform in Gwinnett County, Georgia
looks at the county officials' response to the recommendations in <a href="http://www.cviog.uga.edu/services/assistance/gwinnett/report.pdf&quot; target="”_blank”">the
2007
report</a> drafted by the <a href="http://www.cviog.uga.edu/&quot; target="”_blank”">Carl

In this second of three blog posts on ethics reform in Gwinnett County,

The boom years of the Oughts were very good to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwinnett_County&quot; target="”_blank”">Gwinnett County</a>,
a
suburban Atlanta county of 800,000 that grew by a third in the last
decade. But boom times are rarely good for local government ethics, and
Gwinnett County appears to be no exception. A grand jury report
unsealed in
October (a searchable copy is attached; see below) found a series of

According to<a href="http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/featured-news/ethics-charges-have-been-…; target="”_blank”">
an article in Tuesday's Hartford <i>Advocate</i></a>, a complaint has been
filed with Hartford's ethics commission by a council member against the
former corporation counsel on the grounds that he had taken a job with

Sometimes a conflict situation makes you take a fresh look at common
ethics provisions. This is true of a matter that has arisen in
Poughkeepsie, New York (pronounced Pah-kip'-see), home of Vassar
College, according to <a href="http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20110125/NEWS01/101250320/De…; target="”_blank”">an
article

In a Pay to Play Law Blog response to <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/responding-arguments-against-signific…; target="”_blank”">my
recent blog post</a> on a discussion that had appeared in the Pay to
Play Law Blog, the argument is made that pay-to-play laws that go
beyond disclosure, such as prohibiting campaign contributions from
government contractors, set up a slippery slope toward the undermining

Alabama's new governor, Robert Bentley, said last week in a speech that people who do not accept Jesus as their
savior are not his brother or his sister. Leaving the religious aspects
of this aside, there are two important government ethics issues here,
one involving preferential treatment and the other involving the
core government ethics issue, the confusion of self and office.<br>
<br>

The most underrated aspect of accountability is the need for government
officials to honestly and publicly explain why they do what they do.
This need is strongest for two groups of officials:  elected representatives
and their watchdogs.<br>
<br>
It is, therefore, painful to see the chair of a major county board of
ethics refusing to even speak to the press about his own possible