In the news

Many municipal codes of ethics, including the City Ethics Model Code (Section 100(15)), contain a provision prohibiting the acceptance of fees and honoraria for articles, appearances, or speeches.

Today’s New York Times Science section contains an article about research scientists starting to refuse fees and honoraria. They...

People use sunshine laws to retaliate against political opponents (it’s easy to find technical violations and use them to show an opponent is not being open; and you don’t even have to find them: newspapers write up baseless allegations just the same).

But it is rare that sunshine laws lead to fisticuffs. According to the Star Press of East Central Indiana, this...

Do ethics board members have a duty to follow more than the letter of their ethics code?

This issue has arisen with respect to the Detroit Board of Ethics. The Board’s chair, attorney Reginald Turner, joined the membership (that is, fundraising) committee of a defense fund for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. A complaint has been filed against the mayor with the Board of Ethics. Therefore, the Board chair is helping to raise funds to defend against a case that may come before the Board. He...

Financial disclosure scares citizens away from sitting on local boards and commissions. This is the “fact” stated every time any level of financial disclosure is discussed. In my state, Connecticut, all the financial disclosure that was required in a recent bill was the name of one’s employer, and yet the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities opposed it with the same old canard.

“Canard” is French for “duck” or, more appropriately in this case, “Duck!” which is effectively what...

There is one local government conflict of interest that is often ignored because it was created at the federal level by a federal statute. The statute is known as the Hatch Act of 1939 (Title 5, Subchapter III), originally known as An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities (they don’t make statute names like they used to).

The Hatch Act limits the political activities...