In the news

Transparency is often seen as a technical, often annoying part of municipal ethics. All those notices and agendas that have to be filed at the right time in the right place, all those document requests from the news media and opposition parties. Is all this really necessary for good government? Does it lower taxes, provide better services? Or is it just a pain in the neck?

Sometimes you need a big disaster – Enron, for example – for people to understand the cost of not acting...

The Ethics Resource Center in Washington DC has released an interesting document for anyone active in the Ethics & Compliance Officer field - see the quotes below which give a taste of the subject of the document:

I would like to nominate the new film Charlie Wilson’s War, a Mike Nichols film starring Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Julia Roberts, for the City Ethics Top Ten Ethics Films list.

Charlie Wilson is a multi-term congressman whose principal activities are drinking, diddling, and (a distant third) deal-making. He happens to also become the major force behind U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen against...

It is natural for a current or former firefighter to be interested in serving on a fire commission, or a current or former teacher in serving on a school board. But is there an ongoing conflict of interest in doing so?

The question arose on the Milford, Connecticut school board recently. Three members are former school teachers who held union leadership positions.

Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.

It seems so mean-spirited to talk about the conflicts of interest that arise from politicians’ charitable activities, but the revelations about the Clinton Foundation show, in big numbers, what happens so often, in smaller numbers, across the country.

There are limits on how much money one can give to a candidate. But there are no...

In this article published in the Orlando Sentinel, the "Consultant" referred to was Carla Miller, of CityEthics, in a workshop presented in the spring of 2007.

From: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/views/orl-ethics1707dec17,0,...

Richard Foglesong | Special To The Sentinel   (Orlando)

December 17, 2007