Ethics Codes

This month, in Portland, CT, home of the stone used to build New York City's brownstones, the new ethics commission found that it was a violation of the town's ethics code for the board of selectmen (the town's management board) to hire attorneys who had given campaign contributions to the board of selectmen majority's party town committee, according to the EC's minutes. The contributions of the...

Let me take a logical approach to the topic of government ethics proceeding confidentiality before I look at what has been happening in Utah this last week.

Your big brother is a powerful member of city council, and you're just a deputy city clerk. There's got to be more than this! So you retire, take your pension of $68,000, and run for state representative, with all the support your brother and his friends can provide, adding another $86,000 in salary and the prospect of a second government pension. Not bad.

But not enough. You set up a lobbying firm, "to help businesses engage" with the city, and you let your partner engage with the...

One thing I have scarcely mentioned in my blog are ethical rules related to a local board or commission when it is acting in a quasi-judicial manner. I mentioned the common-law conflicts in such circumstances in a recent blog post, as well as the absolute immunity given to the Philadelphia ethics board due to its quasi-judicial activities in...

I don't usually use examples from Congress, but this one is too good, and instructive. According to yesterday's New York Times, Billy Tauzin, when he was a Louisiana congressional representative, started two hunting clubs, whose memberships included primarily lobbyists and executives of companies with business before the committee he chaired, the energy and commerce committee.

EC Jurisdiction Over Independent Agencies: The Charter's the Answer
In Jacksonville, where City Ethics' president, Carla Miller, is the ethics officer, the charter revision commission unanimously voted to give the city's ethics commission jurisdiction over all the city's independent agencies, according to an article in yesterday's Daily Record.