County Related

Most ethics codes effectively define a conflict of interest as a conflict between an official's personal financial interest and an official's obligation to the public interest. But this leaves out an enormous number of personal interests, many of which are themselves financial, including the financial interests of family members, business associates, and favorite charities.

Gift provisions often make it a violation for immediate family members to accept gifts from those doing...

The NYC Campaign Finance Board has put together an excellent Doing Business Database, consisting of a searchable list of individuals (principal owners, principal officers, and senior managers of entities) “doing business” with a wide assortment of city agencies and quasi-governmental entities, including through contracts, bids or proposals for contracts, concessions, franchises, grants, economic development agreements,...

Last month, I wrote about the conflict of interest that led credit agencies to ignore the risk inherent in mortgage-backed securities. A front-page article in today's New York Times shows how a different sort of conflict of interest at Citigroup allowed the risks involved in these securities to be ignored. No crimes, no politics, just plain...

A controversy currently going on in Fairfield, CT reminded me that one of the more easily misunderstood provisions of an ethics code is the special consideration, preferential treatment, or favoritism provision. The version in the City Ethics Model Code reads as follows:

I may seem obsessed with legislative immunity, but it is both a timely topic for so old a constitutional concept and a serious threat to local government ethics enforcement that, I feel, the government ethics community should start dealing with offensively rather than, as it is now being handled, defensively.

A decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last year, Almonte v. City of Long...

I hadn't realized it, but two weeks ago Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan dismissed a state ethics commission case against the state's former senate president, William V. Irons, due to legislative immunity. Like the Louisiana decision, this one involved a basic conflict of interest - whether Sen. Irons should not have voted...