Conflicts

What is the best way to prevent high-level officials from participating in matters involving departments or agencies where their close family members are employed, without doing this unreasonably, that is, excluding situations where the family members have no influence and will receive no benefits?

This is the question that has been raised in Baltimore by council members, particularly the council president who, according to...

“It’s much to-do about not much. I’m trying to run a city, and you’re worried about people’s relationships?” These are the words of Mount Vernon, NY mayor Ernest Davis, who is the subject of IRS and FBI investigations, and now an investigation by the city's ethics board, according to an article in Wednesday's Journal News.

Dealing...

The Los Angeles mayoral race has unearthed some conflict of interest allegations that are worth a look. There are three interesting issues. One, how much stock ownership in a public company is required to give rise to a conflict? Two, what about ownership of a competitor? And three, what if you don't know a public company whose stock you own is involved in a matter before you?

According to...

Some very interesting issues arise out of a past (and present) conflict situation that has become an issue in this week's mayoral primary in the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, KS ("UG").

The conflict situation appears simple at first glance, but it is not. In 2007, a UG commissioner became the paid executive director of the Argentine Neighborhood Development Association ("ANDA"), a nonprofit Community...

Note: When I originally wrote this blog post, I erroneously assumed that the ethics commission member whose conflict situation I discuss was the only one selected by the assembly speaker. I since learned that three of the members were selected by the assembly speaker. I would argue, therefore, that these three members are in the same situation (except for the personal opinion expressed about someone who would presumably be involved in the matter). With a fourteen-member commission, the...

One of the rarely questioned truisms of local government ethics is, "One size does not fit all." Usually this means that one ethics code is not right for every city or county, that every jurisdiction has its own issues and problems.

In some ways this is true. New York City's huge ethics program is hardly appropriate to a small town, because there is such a large difference in available resources. But there is no difference when it comes to ethics rules or the need for training or...