Technicalities should play little role in discussions about local government ethics. But because there are ethics laws, people unashamedly talk about ethics technicalities. They see ethics laws as like any other law, not as minimal requirements that deserve more thinking about what's appropriate than about what's legal.

According to an article in Saturday's ...

Earlier this week, I wrote about an application of Louisiana ethics law that I felt was too severe. Today I'm going to write about a Louisiana ethics provision, a fairly typical gift provision that applies to local government officials, which is too weak, because it has a big loophole in it.

If the governmental ethics community had a publicity program, the headline of a front-page article in Tuesday's Kansas City Star would be a call to arms:

Legislators agree: Ethics laws are puppies, not pit bulls

In Louisiana, local government officials cannot do any sort of business with anyone who does business with their local government. This position is supported by a settlement reached with an Alexandria council member, according to an article at thetowntalk.com. The charges are...

In March, I started out a blog entry by saying that "I thought I might write a piece about using ethics complaints for the purpose of political harassment" with respect to Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. But then I discovered that the particular ethics complaint was legitimate, and talked about the complaint itself and how it applied to local government situations.

On Sunday, the Anchorage Daily News ran...

It appears that Jackson County (MO) legislators will allow the county ethics commission to have jurisdiction over them, after a very ugly series of incidents, including the resignation of the entire ethics commission and the false presentation of the jurisdiction issue at the meeting where the new ethics code was passed, just a couple of months ago.