Model Code

According to an article in today's Denton (TX) Record-Chronicle, the Denton (pop. 106,000) council voted 4-2, with the mayor recusing himself, to give the city's tax collection contract to the mayor's law firm (he is one of two partners in the four-lawyer firm).

The firm had the contract before its partner was elected mayor, but the contract ran...

According to an article in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune this week, the lame-duck mayor of Northfield, MN, home of Carleton and St. Olaf Colleges, has been charged with five counts of misconduct by a public official and two counts of conflict of interest under the town's ethics code (there is no...

A difficult aspect of government ethics is the percentage of a company that must be owned by a government official in order for there to be a conflict of interest. The figure chosen for ethics codes is usually 5%.

In Arcata, California, according to an article in yesterday's Times-Standard, there is a policy to review the city's conflict of interest code every two years. This is extremely rare. Ethics codes are usually reviewed only when there is a scandal or when a mayor wants to add a feather to his or her hat.

A regular review of an ethics code...

It was exciting to see someone who made her reputation as a government ethics advocate named to the Republican ticket. But it was very troubling to read how she handled a recent revolving door matter.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has come up with a new defense of a potential conflict of interest: "I'm investing in something I believe in."

What she was investing in, as "part of an entrepreneurial package," as she said on yesterday's Meet the Press, according to a partial transcript, was T. Boone Pickens' Clean Energy Fuels Corp., which despite Pickens' emphasis on wind power, also...