Local Government Attorneys

Looking at government ethics through the appearance standard, as Dennis Thompson did in his book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, reveals the great importance of independence to ethics advice and enforcement. No one is in a worse position to see appearances of impropriety than someone who considers his motives to be good, and his...

A post yesterday in Coates' Canons: NC Local Government Law Blog raises an interesting issue about the situation of a local government candidate who has an interest in a contract with the local government which, by NC law, is prohibited not for candidates, but for a winning candidate the day he or she takes office. This provides a good occasion to look at the intersection of candidates and local government ethics...

How many hats can a local government attorney wear when it comes to government ethics? This question arises out of a state bar grievance filed against Houston's city attorney by a member of the city council.

According to an article in the Houston Chronicle last week, the council member alleged that the city...

It staggers the imagination how combative local government officials can sometimes be with respect to ethics commissions. A year ago, I wrote about a former Sioux Falls (SD) council member, Kermit Staggers, who attacked complaints filed by the city's ethics board as "frivolous" and attacked its procedures when it gave him two private, that is confidential,...

The Supreme Court reached a decision today in the Carrigan case, and it is nearly unanimous. However, it deals with only one part of the arguments made by Carrigan (see my blog post on the oral argument): whether a...

A report on the relationship between New York's state university system (SUNY) and the SUNY Research Foundation (RF) was published yesterday. What makes it of interest to this blog is the way the report emphasizes the personal nature of the management of the foundation, which distributes nearly a billion dollars a year in research grants almost exclusively to SUNY's many colleges and universities; the way it...