If a council member's law firm wants to bid on being the local
government's
attorney, a contract that is approved by the council, what is the
responsible way to handle the matter?<br>
<br>

I recently read a book by Stanley Cavell called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cities-Words-Pedagogical-Letters-Register/dp/0674…; target="”_blank”">Cities of Words: Pedagogical
Letters on a Register of the Moral Life</a> (2004). Despite its title, it
is not
about cities; in fact, much of the book uses movies to discuss this

Here are three cases from New York City that
involve relations between superiors and subordinates, one of the most
important aspects of local government ethics. What is especially interesting is that two of these cases involve co-opting, in one case of subordinates, in the other of vendors. These cases were included
in COGEL's ethics update last week.<br>
<br>

<b>Update:</b> December 14, 2010 (see below):<br>
<br>
One thing I learned at the COGEL conference last week is that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darleen_Druyun&quot; target="”_blank”">Darleen
Druyun</a>, the infamous Air Force procurement officer who favored Boeing
before taking a job with it, had been given ethics advice on six
occasions and ignored it.<br>
<br>

At the annual Council on Governmental Ethics conference in Washington D.C.
<h2>From left:</h2>
<ul>
<li>Kurt Nemes, World Bank Ethics Office</li>
<li>Carla Miller, City Ethics</li>
<li>Matt Cross, Office of Governmental Ethics</li>
</ul>
Each presented as a part of an ethics training seminar in Washington DC, Dec. 2010
<br><br><br>

Quick. What's the biggest government ethics problem?<br>
<br>

Yet another court decision discussed at the COGEL conference placed
First Amendment free speech rights far above the obligations of a
government official, employing a strict scrutiny approach where a simple due process (for statutory vagueness) approach would have been sufficient. This time the official is a member of the Sparks
(NV) city council, in fact, the same council member who successfully
sued to overturn an advisory opinion of the state ethics commission in

<h4>I have abstained because some unnamed person tried to question my
integrity and silence my voice on this issue. So I was forced to ask
the Ethics Officer for an opinion, and she gave me one. She told me I
could participate in the debate and that I could actually vote on this
issue. But because we're dealing with politics, and, as Jim Maddox
always said, you can never take the p out of politics, I've got to
think and calculate down the road to see if someone would try to use my

"You say that [we are] corrupt and I'll jump over this table and punch
you out." Those are the words of Philadelphia city commissioner
Margaret Tartaglione, according to <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20101209_Tartaglione_defends_in…; target="”_blank”">an
article in yesterday's Philadelphia <i>Inquirer</i></a>. She was upset by a

<b>A Municipal Bid Rigging Scheme Comes to Light</b><br>
According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/business/08muni.html&quot; target="”_blank”">an
article in the New York <i>Times</i></a> this week, Banc of America Securities
(which recently merged with Merrill Lynch) agreed to pay the SEC and others $137 million to settle charges related to
a municipal bond bid-rigging scheme. For those who think competitive