Jurisdiction

The word from Jackson County (MO) last week was that the county legislature was "close to revising the county’s ethics code to include them under its rules," according to an article in the Kansas City Star, as discussed, very skeptically, in a recent blog entry....

It appears that Jackson County (MO) legislators will allow the county ethics commission to have jurisdiction over them, after a very ugly series of incidents, including the resignation of the entire ethics commission and the false presentation of the jurisdiction issue at the meeting where the new ethics code was passed, just a couple of months ago.

The oral arguments before the Nevada Supreme Court in the Commission on Ethics v. Hardy appeal are now available in MP3 format, suitable for your media player.

It doesn't look as if the decision will be a good one for government ethics enforcement, certainly at the state level and, perhaps, at the local level, as well.

Who is covered by an ethics code can be very important. In Baltimore, for instance, as I wrote in a recent blog entry, the city solicitor has interpreted the ethics code to require disclosure of gifts only from companies doing business with the city, not from their owners, officers, or employees.

I also wrote recently about jurisdiction over...

It had to happen soon:  a legislative immunity defense has been used in a local government ethics matter, albeit in a city where violations are criminally prosecuted. I happened upon it in my research on my last blog entry, about the Baltimore mayor's defenses of her taking gifts from a city developer when she was president of the city council.

According to an article in the Tulsa World, last week the city's Ethics Advisory Committee (EAC) ruled in favor of one of its members, Michael Slankard, with respect to an advisory opinion request by the city attorney. This situation raises several interesting issues.