Misuse of Office/Special

I recently wrote a blog post about a situation where a citizen asked an ethics commission for ethics advice when council members failed to do so and, despite the corporation counsel's suggestion that it provide the advice, the ethics commission refused to provide it.

In this post, I would like to consider the matter about which the citizen sought advice. The matter involved the...

It was very refreshing to hear Ann Arbor council member Steven Kunselman, in an interview with Jeanine DeLay of A2Ethics, an Ann Arbor-based ethics organization, talking openly, honestly, and intelligently about some local government ethics situations. The two situations he...

According to an article in last week's Economist, last year 22 local councils in Italy were disbanded and taken over by the national government due to alleged infiltration by organized crime. This is an extreme way to deal with a poor local government ethics environment. But it's a very difficult problem for a local government to deal with.

What about over here? According to...

According to an investigative article on Nashville's WTVF-TV site yesterday evening, a former property assessor had help from a developer in disposing of her home and buying one from the developer, and also undervalued nine of the developer's properties by a total of $9.5 million over three years.

According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel last week, the Florida Commission on Ethics found probable cause that the Osceola County Clerk of the Court "[used] his position to intimidate [his office's] employees in order to enhance his personal and political power." This raises the issue of whether...

Many ethics codes expressly state that government officials and employees may not allow the use of city stationery for any purpose other than city business. The principal goal of this rule is to prevent officials from using city stationery for personal purposes, such as campaigns, business transactions, and charitable solicitations. The rule is part of the more general prohibition of the misuse of city resources and of the city's power and reputation as the manager of the community.
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