In the news

One of the big stories in government ethics this week involves an attempt in Tennessee to consolidate the state ethics and campaign finance commissions, which on its face sounds like a good way to save money during these tough times. But when politicians deal with ethics laws and bodies, things are rarely that simple, especially when the state's ethics director is fired in the midst of the debate.

To those who read my recent blog entry, it will come as no surprise that, yesterday, the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the District Court's ruling in the Nevada legislative immunity case (the Order of Affirmation, in searchable form, is attached to this blog entry below).

The two best defenses against dealing responsibly with a conflict are that the local government attorney told me it was okay, and I didn't know there was a conflict. The first can be dealt with by getting the local government attorney out of the government ethics picture. But the second requires something few local government ethics codes require: applicant disclosure.

It's not easy to make ethics training enjoyable, so it's good to see how other people have tried. According to an article in Human Resource Executive, Cisco Systems came up with a parody of American Idol, with parody songs about ethics situations and three judges critically discussing each song/...

“If Boss Tweed were alive today, he would be a placement agent.” So said New York's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, announcing a settlement with the Carlyle Group, by which the Carlyle Group, an outside investment manager for many government pension funds, will no longer hire placement agents to get public pension business and will greatly limit its officers' and employees' campaign contributions to anyone involved with public pensions (according to...

Updates below (latest on August 11, 2009)
There's an interesting situation in Colorado Springs. According to an article in yesterday's Colorado Springs Gazette, an ethics complaint filed against the city's weak mayor alleged that the mayor was an investment adviser to a developer...