States and Municipal Ethics

This second blog post on the briefs filed concerning whether the Carrigan case should be accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court glances at arguments in the briefs filed by the two parties and then makes a different argument for why the First Amendment has no place in this sort of government ethics matter. Making this argument gets to the root of how the Constitution, and government ethics, protect the public. If only the courts would let the Constitution and government ethics work together, as they...

Note: I made a few important changes to this blog post on January 10, in conjunction with the posting of my analysis of the parties' briefs in this case.

The Nevada Supreme Court's Carrigan decision, which I...

An editorial in yesterday's Star Press of east central Indiana calls for passage of a state law to prevent municipal employees from sitting on a body that oversees their department or agency's budget. The focus is primarily on preventing city and county workers from sitting on city and county councils.

The editorial calls it a "no-brainer" because "it's a conflict of interest to have public...

It not only takes a number of officials to allow unethical conduct to occur, it also takes a number of officials to undermine the effect of a good ethics program. An ugly example occurred recently in North Providence, Rhode Island, a city where three former council members are awaiting trial for charges of extortion and bribery.

Cuyahoga County, OH, which includes Cleveland, has been the site of a large number of arrests of government officials, contractors, and developers, primarily for making and accepting bribes (see my blog post). The most recent arrest occurred on December 17.

As of this week, the county has a new form of government, featuring a county...

One Moore County (NC) commissioner has been faced with two conflict of interest matters in 2010, one of which led him to recently resign from a board. Although the two have nothing to do with each other, they have become politically intertwined which, along with the lack of an ethics program, has prevented the responsible handling of the conflicts.