Misuse of Office/Special

Conflicts of interest are not always positive, any more than relationships are always positive. And conflicts are based on relationships.

We tend to think of an official using his position to help a family member or business associate. But sometimes officials use their position to harm someone with whom they have a negative relationship, anyone from a former in-law (the bum who dumped my sister) or current in-law (that woman who's driving my brother crazy) to a former business...

In my book Local Government Ethics Programs, I have argued for the language of "benefit" instead of the language of "interest." (for some of the reasons why, click here and search for "terminology"). When a colleague asked me for a list of the jurisdictions that do, in fact, use the language of "benefit," I did some eye-opening research. Here are the results, based on the ethics codes in...

Yesterday's blog post discussed the law giving California's Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) authority over §1090 of the state code, which deals with contract-related conflicts of interest and applies to both local and state officials. Knowing little about this section, which stands outside the state's ethics code (known as the Political Reform Act), I did a...

Yesterday evening, I attended a meeting of my town's planning and zoning commission. The principal agenda item involved a request for an amendment to the town plan to allow the building of a private recycling center in the town. The commission's secretary read a letter from the requesting party's attorney, who is a member of another town board, withdrawing the request. The letter said that the principal reason for withdrawal of the request was opposition to the amendment by a small group of...

There is usually another side of the coin, and that other side is often ignored in drafting a government ethics code. The other side of the nepotism coin came up recently in an ethics proceeding in Stamford, CT.

According to an article this week in the Stamford Advocate, a former finance board member filed an ethics complaint against a former...

"It was like dandelions. You just accept them. They were there, something you've seen all your life."

Dandelions are a perfect metaphor for institutional corruption. In this case, the dandelions were extra payments (beyond those due to retirees) made by Detroit's two pension funds, to active employees (54%), retirees (14%), and the city itself (32%), the latter to lower annual contributions to the funds, according to...