In the news

I may seem obsessed with legislative immunity, but it is both a timely topic for so old a constitutional concept and a serious threat to local government ethics enforcement that, I feel, the government ethics community should start dealing with offensively rather than, as it is now being handled, defensively.

A decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last year, Almonte v. City of Long...

I hadn't realized it, but two weeks ago Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan dismissed a state ethics commission case against the state's former senate president, William V. Irons, due to legislative immunity. Like the Louisiana decision, this one involved a basic conflict of interest - whether Sen. Irons should not have voted...

The DiMasi case, discussed in the most recent blog entry, is not the only ethics case in Massachusetts that has drawn a lot of attention. The result of a perception of increasing ethical misconduct has led the governor to appoint a new task force on public integrity, according to an editorial in today's Boston Globe with an inapt plumbing metaphor in its...

This week, another state ethics commission is facing a defense of legislative immunity. The state is Massachusetts, and the legislator happens to be the speaker of the house, Sal DiMasi.

According to an article in the Boston Globe, one allegation against DiMasi (filed, at least in part, by the opposing political party) is that associates of his,...

I recently discovered that, in May, the Austin's Office of the City Auditor did an extensive report on the city's ethics program, and compared it with 16 comparable American cities (Arlington (TX), Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Kansas City (MO or KS?), Memphis, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, San Diego, San Jose, and Seattle).

This report has...

One of the most important elements of any government ethics program is ethical hiring. Ethical hiring lowers the possibility of hiring people with serious conflicts of interest not only by being careful about the selection process, but also by sending a clear message that conflicts are serious business and must be disclosed even before an official is hired. Unethical people will find the hiring process, and the thought of working for people who would put them through it, unacceptable and will...