There's a lot of talk about the lack of government ethics in Albany,
New York State's capital, but not much about the state of government
ethics in the city of Albany itself. In July, the Albany Times-Union ran a
long article on the mayor and the police chief's relationship with
the city's largest developer. It also noted that the city council is
considering an ethics code for the city (...
According to a
Washington Post article
this weekend, U.S. Senators Conrad and Dodd were cleared by
the Senate Select Committee on Ethics with respect to the senators'
membership in Countrywide Financial's VIP mortgage program. The
committee concluded that the senators were given special treatment, but
that others were given similarly special treatment and that...
John
Hazlehurst's observation on the Colorado Springs ethics
commission's dismissal of a complaint against the mayor is valuable
enough to deserve a separate blog post, rather than a mere update to my original post on
this topic.
An important issue involved the mayor's insistence that, as an
investment adviser, he could...
It's rare to see the clear results of unethical behavior in local
government. Sadly, exceptionally clear results can be seen in a front-page
article in today's New York Times.
Jefferson County, Alabama, the home of Birmingham, had a serious
scandal involving sewer repairs and bonds, which I wrote about last year
(...
It may be midsummer, but it's still a busy season for local government
ethics. Here's how a few local governments are dealing with ethics
reform.
Palm Beach County commissioners agreed to create an inspector general
and ethics commission, according to an
article in the Palm Beach Post.
The commission says it will ask voters in November 2010...
Open Records Requests and
Ethics Proceedings
In an unusual twist on the confidentiality of ethics proceedings,
counsel for the Colorado Springs mayor's former client, the person who gave rise to the mayor's apparent conflict of interest, has made an open records
request for all documents related to the ethics proceeding against the
mayor, according to an
article in the Colorado...