Ethics Codes

"It's a very powerful story of a public official who wanted to do the right thing, who got appropriate advice, and then ended up being punished. He was punished for doing his public duty and voting, just because a political ally was involved. I don't call that a conflict of interest. I call that democracy."

—Joshua Rosenkranz, a New York lawyer representing Sparks City (NV) council member Mike Carrigan in his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of a suit attempting to overturn a censure...

Cook County assessor Joseph Berrios is becoming a regular character in this blog (see below for prior posts on him). This time he is declaring unconstitutional a law passed by the county to limit his fundraising from lawyers who appeal property tax assessments. And he has the support of a questionable opinion from the local state's attorney, according to...

Conflicting Employment Is Nothing to Rave About
Some forms of conflicting employment are wrong to the extent that the only way to handle the conflict responsibly is to resign from one of the jobs. If this is not done, even a minor conflict can be very damaging, especially when there are already other problems. This is the case with an administrator at the Los Angeles Coliseum who worked on the side as a consultant for a company that annually produced a rave at the Coliseum.

On January 28, the New York State Bar Association issued a report on government ethics reform in New York State, which includes a section on local government ethics reform. The report points out the many inadequacies of...

An article in the Bismarck (ND) Tribune this weekend raised the issue of when a board or commission member may withdraw from a matter in which he feels he has a conflict, but where there is not a direct, pecuniary interest. It turns out that, back in 2007, the Burleigh County state's attorney had asked the attorney general for...

Transparency, although not generally part of a local ethics code, is central to a local government's ethics environment. A lack of transparency is both a tell-tale sign that things are wrong, and an impediment to discussing ethics issues and enforcing ethics violations. Unfortunately, ethics codes do have confidential information provisions, making it appear to those who do not understand government ethics that it is more important to hide confidential information than to let the sunshine in...