Local Government Attorneys

There are many perils of an inadequate local government ethics code, as can be seen in Colorado Springs, which passed an ethics code in 2007. Last week, I wrote a blog entry about the new ethics commission's first complaint. Even before the ethics commission has met on the complaint, problems have arisen, according to...

Loyalty is a virtue that is out of place in government, because loyalty is a personal virtue, a virtue that involves one's own personal interest and that of the person one is loyal to.

Loyalty is a particularly difficult issue for local government attorneys, because loyalty is essentially the principal virtue for attorneys. Attorneys' conflicts of interest involve interests that get in the way of complete loyalty to a client.

Updates below (latest on August 11, 2009)
There's an interesting situation in Colorado Springs. According to an article in yesterday's Colorado Springs Gazette, an ethics complaint filed against the city's weak mayor alleged that the mayor was an investment adviser to a developer...

Earlier this week, I wrote about an application of Louisiana ethics law that I felt was too severe. Today I'm going to write about a Louisiana ethics provision, a fairly typical gift provision that applies to local government officials, which is too weak, because it has a big loophole in it.

Here's a short opinion piece by Walter Dellinger, head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Pres. Clinton. It's part of a series of such pieces that will appear in tomorrow's Washington Post. The opinions concern what Pres. Obama should be looking for in his first Supreme Court nominee. After Dellinger's opinion piece, I tie his ideas into...

How often should ethics commissions meet?

The usual answer to that question is, As often as they need to. But how often is that?