County Related

There are people who get great satisfaction going after the ethics of government ethics professionals. Rarely are their accusations relevant to government ethics; it's just about showing that we're not good people, either, as if government ethics was just about good and bad. Maybe we should wear t-shirts that say, on the front, "We're Not Perfect," and on the back, "So?"

Usually, in government ethics situations, local officials can get away with doing nothing, especially when the conflict isn't theirs. Few ethics codes have provisions prohibiting complicity in and requiring the reporting of others' ethics violations (see the City Ethics Model Code's provision for a provision that covers both).

That's why I found it refreshing to come across an...

According to an op-ed piece by a county commissioner from Collier County, Florida (in the Naples Daily News), two interesting twists on the gift to an official's favorite charity gambit occurred recently. Gifts to officials' favorite charities are a common way to get around pay-to-play laws. Here is what...

This third of three posts on ethics reform in Gwinnett County, Georgia looks at the county officials' response to the recommendations in the 2007 report drafted by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, and in...

In this second of three blog posts on ethics reform in Gwinnett County, Georgia, I will look at recommendations for ethics reform made by a grand jury in its October 2010 report, and by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia in...

The boom years of the Oughts were very good to Gwinnett County, a suburban Atlanta county of 800,000 that grew by a third in the last decade. But boom times are rarely good for local government ethics, and Gwinnett County appears to be no exception. A grand jury report unsealed in October (a searchable copy is attached; see below) found a series of land acquisitions by the county at above market price (even after the...