In the news

Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi will be resigning his house seat tomorrow, according to an article in today's Boston Globe. DiMasi is currently being investigated by the Massachusetts Ethics Commission, and he has raised...

What happens if an ethics commission enters into a settlement agreement in which an official admits to certain conduct in violation of the jurisdiction's ethics code, and then the official goes out into the world and says he did nothing wrong, but felt it was best for everyone to pay the fine and move on?

Well, according to an article in yesterday's...

As I wrote in a blog entry nearly two years ago, Memphis has broken records in terms of convicted public officials. But its mayor of seventeen years, Willie Herenton, has stood above it all. At least until now.

One result of the many convictions in Memphis was a new ethics ordinance in 2007 (not directly accessible via the city website search mechanism)...

A year ago, I wrote about New York City Council's earmark funds and the ways they were being abused. Atlanta's council members have a different sort of fund, not intended to help their constituents, but intended to help themselves. They too are open to abuse and, according to an article in yesterday's...

Are loans to businesses that do business with a city sufficient to create a conflict of interest? This is the question that has been batted around recently in Washington, D.C., according to an article in today's Washington Post.

Special districts are an important and growing form of local government, and yet they often fly beneath the radar. In fact, I've only mentioned them once in my blog. And most citizens have no idea what they are or that they exist in their area (I myself can't name one in my area). For this reason, conflicts of interest involving special districts also remain, for the most part, invisible.