In the news

Last week, I wrote about municipal corruption scandals in Montreal. This week, I'm happy to be able to write about a report requested by the province of Quebec, which determined that the province's municipalities should all have a code of ethics (only about 10% do now), that the largest cities and the counties should have ethics commissioners, and that financial disclosure and ethics training should be required. Contractors...

See update below:
An issue that arises in many local governments involves campaign contributions from local government employees, which often appear to be coerced or required, that is, they appear to result from a misuse of office by elected officials. Often, it appears that the giving occurs because employees are concerned about keeping their jobs. This concern includes concern about retaliation as well as concern about what will happen if the candidate loses.

This...

Ethics Reform and Ethics Environments
This weekend, the Press-Enterprise ran an excellent editorial about ethics reform in San Bernardino County. Not only do the editors recognize that watered-down, "symbolic" ethics reform is worthless, but they also recognize that even valuable ethics reform, such as a proposed sunshine ordinance...

Update - July 31, 2009 - see below
In my April blog post about the legislative immunity defense made by a former Baltimore council member (now the mayor), I felt that her arguments didn't have a chance. Well, I was wrong. I was wrong primarily because I thought that a state prosecutor would be determined to see the case through and, therefore, would put up a good fight on the issue. He did not (his argument on this...

As I have noted again and again, there is no more difficult, conflicted role than that of a local government attorney. In small towns, there's not a lot that can be done. But in cities and counties, there are several things that can be done to lessen the local government attorney's conflicts.

We here in the U.S. like to think of Canadians as like us, but better. More honest, less greedy, more accepting of diversity, etc. And they pay for it by being dull.

In the realm of government ethics, this sadly isn't true. At least in Montreal. According to a recent article in The Economist, Montreal was not only notorious for its...