Model Code

I've been on a sort of work-leave the last two weeks. My town, North Haven, Connecticut (pop. 24,000), has been a mess for a long time, but few people have cared enough to pay attention, and those who criticize the administration are personally attacked and delegitimized. It was my town's mess, and my inability to do anything locally, that led me to do work for Common Cause Connecticut, and then devote myself full-time to municipal ethics by coming to work for City Ethics.

Sadly, it...

According to an article in today's Louisville Courier-Journal, there is a dispute in Jeffersonville, Kentucky that is worth taking a look at.

The mayor has accused the city board of ethics' attorney of having a conflict of interest and is urging that he be fired. The conflict involves support for the another mayoral candidate (in the primary).

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'It doesn't serve the people to have an ethics commission responsible to the body of government it reviews. It's counterintuitive.'

'Anonymous comment to an Eye on Miami blog entry about the desire of the Miami-Dade County Ethics Commission to strengthen its powers and responsibilities

Having politicians on the Queensbury, NY Ethics Board has created a mess. According to an article in the Glen Falls PostStar, one council member brought a complaint against another council member, and when the ethics board found that the respondent should have recused himself on a vote, the respondent insisted that some of the ethics board members were acting out of political spite.

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Who should be in charge of writing and revising municipal ethics codes?

Generally, ethics codes are the work of a mayor or a council, or sometimes they both jockey for the position of being seen as more ethical (this is especially true when a council member is considering a run for mayor). Sometimes they're the work of the city attorney, who in any event often does the drafting for his or her boss, who may be the council, the mayor, or the city manager. And sometimes they're the work...

A former chancellor of Maricopa Community College in Phoenix, Arizona continued to work for the college on contract, while also having a business on the side that did business with the college on a no-bid basis. The business was set up by the college when he was chancellor and was given to him a few months after he retired.

The former chancellor denies any conflict of interest because his business (Sedona Conferences and Conversations, which does business with colleges around the...