Contractors and Vendors

A new argument has been made in the legislative immunity part of the case against a Baltimore council member who is now the mayor. In a memorandum to dismiss a new indictment (attached; see below), filed on September 8, the mayor has argued, on pages 3-10, that testimony by someone who attended events which the mayor attended in her legislative capacity cannot be used against her.

This is an interesting extension of the argument that legislative immunity prevents any evidence to be...

DuPage County, IL, a county of nearly a million people just outside Chicago (its largest town is Naperville), is juggling two ethics ordinance revision processes, one for the county, the other for the county election commission. Both appear to have attracted some controversy.

Some news in Greensboro, NC led me to a blog post on old news in Greenburgh, NY, so here's the new news and the old news about two cities with nearly the same name.

In Greensboro, NC, a council candidate has thrown down a challenge to fill out and post online the state financial disclosure form. It's not quite appropriate, since all its references are to the state, but it does require a good deal of...

Two former public works employees are in the news this week for misconduct.

Here's an interesting potential conflict. Chicago's Civic Federation, a "non-partisan government research organization working to maximize the quality and cost-effectiveness of government services in the Chicago region and State of Illinois," is asked by the city council to evaluate the city's 2016 Olympics bid, to make sure that Mayor Daley's Olympic committee has a reasonable financial plan, according to...

One of the most contentious topics in local government ethics is prohibition vs. disclosure of gifts to officials. As with so many government ethics issues, the best answer is both, but reaching the best answer requires a thinking outside the box, along with a sincere interest in ending pay-to-play, in this case, the use of gifts as a way to reward officials for past or future conduct.

One example of such thinking outside the box comes from City Ethics' own Carla Miller, the...