Contractors and Vendors

Many people believe that conflicts of interest are in and of themselves bad, and that government ethics laws should prevent those with conflicts of interest from becoming public servants. Many people believe that government ethics is about being good or bad. When the two come together in one person and one speech, the result can be fireworks.

People who have misconceptions about government ethics also tend not to be able to distinguish between different sorts of conflict situation...

Police Officer Side Businesses and Revenue Distinctions
There's an interesting article in yesterday's New Pittsburgh Courier about Pittsburgh police officer side businesses and the sorts of problem they create. One of the problems derives from a false distinction between different sorts of revenue.
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It's been over two years since I wrote about the indictments of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his father, and a city contractor. This morning, according to an article in the Detroit Free Press...

A February draft advisory opinion from the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission (attached; see below) raises two different issues. One is the problematic nature of a total gift ban, that is, a ban on all gifts from anyone, accompanied by a whole host of exceptions. The other is the important differences among gifts, campaign contributions, and contributions to an official's legal defense fund...

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...