In the news

Update: February 5, 2010 (see below)

Here's an interesting dual position question, that is, a question involving one individual holding two government positions. The most important conflict involved in dual positions is that you cannot consistently fulfill your fiduciary obligations to one constituency while fulfilling your obligations to the other. See my blog post on state-local dual positions for a discussion of more...

Update: February 3, 2010 (see below)

A NC Local Government Blog post yesterday made me aware that there have recently been some very public conflict of interest issues involving North Carolina's alcoholic beverage control (ABC) system, the state liquor sales program, which allows each city and county to have a local alcoholic beverage control board and employees (163 boards in all).

Yesterday, the California Supreme Court published its decision relating to the conflict of interest charges against five members of San Diego's pension board, which I discussed a couple months ago in a blog post.

I continue to be thankful for Sarah Palin's incredible ability to get pedestrian government ethics issues into the public eye. This time it's the use of private e-mails for public business, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times.

Many local government ethics codes have a provision that, when officials publicly give personal opinions rather than the government's position, requires them to clearly state that they are not representing the local government. Here's the one from the ethics code in Santa Clarita (CA) where, according to an...

Which is the more troubling misuse of office? A local government official having a citizen arrested for criticizing him, or a local government official using tax dollars to pay off a citizen so that it doesn't come out that the politician has influence over whom the police arrest?