Jurisdiction

I've written several blog posts about the criminal trials of a Baltimore council member and the former Baltimore mayor, focusing on their successful legislative immunity defenses (1 2 3...

Lawyer-legislators are extremely creative people. The latest use of their creativity is to argue that ethics boards cannot require disclosure of a conflict of interest that arises from legal representation because they have no jurisdiction over the practice of law. Only the state Supreme Court has that jurisdiction.

The lawyer-legislator in this matter is state senator Rob Marionneaux of Louisiana, a state whose ethics code applies to local governments. According to...

When I wrote about the disclosure controversy in Suffolk County back in July, I didn't realize that another interesting ethics issue was going on there. In late June, the county legislature had instituted an investigation of the county ethics commission. One reason for this investigation appears to be the commission's decision to allow the county executive to file only a state disclosure form,...

I'm always fascinated by the myriad ways in which local governments approach ethics reform. An article in the Greenwich Time last week sheds some light on the state of ethics reform in Greenwich, CT. (Disclosure: my brother lives in Greenwich, but is not politically involved, at least that I know of; and the article cites a study of local CT government ethics...

Forget the fascinating range of ethics programs at the local level. It is congressional ethics programs that get the national attention. And with all this attention, what Congress does, and fails to do, has a great effect not only on what happens at the local level, but also on the rhetoric employed there.

When Congress self-administered its own ethics, every council or county commission member could say that if self-regulation is good enough for Congress, it's good enough for them...

How many wrongs does it take to make a right?

According to a Sun-Sentinel article, a county commissioner in Broward County, home of Ft. Lauderdale, resigned on Tuesday after being arrested on seven counts of...