Contractors and Vendors

An Active EC Is a Good Thing
Local officials often say that because there are no complaints to or advisory opinions by their ethics commissions, their town or city government does not have ethics problems. Actually, it's the other way around. Local governments with active ethics commissions, especially dealing with advisory opinions, are more likely to have healthy ethical environments. It shows that people trust the ethics commission, it shows that people are thinking about ethics...

Using government employees for private purposes is one of the most common ethics code violations.

This violation is especially bad because it involves coercion of individuals, in this case subordinates who are not in a position to say no. Coercion and intimidation rarely occur outside of a poor ethical environment.

This violation also shows a serious failure to recognize the boundary between public and private, which is the heart of government ethics.

And...

The lead article in yesterday's New York Times was on charities set up by members of congress. I've written a few times about the use of charities to get around campaign finance and gift provisions (...

The law on limiting campaign expenditures has been changing over the past couple of years. But the law on limiting campaign contributions has not. The standard in many instances is more liberal than with campaign expenditures, in others it is the same. And the application of the standard is highly contextual. A law in one jurisdiction, or at a particular time, might be constitutional, while in another jurisdiction, or at a different time, it is not.

Contribution limits are an...

Gifts from restricted sources, that is, from those doing business with the local government (and their lobbyists), are exceptionally damaging, in that they make the public believe their officials can be bought or that their officials are running a pay-to-play government. It's too bad that at least some members of the Los Angeles ethics commission don't recognize this.

The usual image we get when we hear about a government official getting something free from a contractor is of a new kitchen or driveway. But free services can also be invisible, like legal advice and other professional service.