Model Code

Time is a very important element of conflicts of interest. Some conflicts simply exist, but others either occur suddenly or suddenly become relevant.

For example, an official can have a piece of property for twenty years and then suddenly the owner of a neighboring piece of property asks the local government to help turn it into something that would significantly raise the value of the official's property. That's an easy to problem to deal with.

More difficult is the...

According to a January 15 memorandum, a week from today the Dallas city council will be considering an amendment to the city's ethics code, which would exclude municipal management district (MMD) board members from the ethics code (it has already been approved by the council's...

After many months of deliberation (and a blog post), yesterday the Palm Beach Board of County Commissioners passed three ordinances, establishing a new ethics and lobbying code, ethics commission, and...

I recently critiqued the new Michigan model local government ethics ordinance. Mark Liss, a council member in Michigan alerted me (and the world in his blog) to the new model's similarities with the...

Applicant disclosure is an effective part of local government ethics that is usually ignored. Usually it is officials who are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest, either in the form of annual disclosure statements, revised when circumstances change, or in the form of announcements that they have a potential conflict and are withdrawing from involvement in a matter.

The principal burden should be on officials, but placing an additional burden on applicants -- such...

John Hazlehurst's observation on the Colorado Springs ethics commission's dismissal of a complaint against the mayor is valuable enough to deserve a separate blog post, rather than a mere update to my original post on this topic.

An important issue involved the mayor's insistence that, as an investment adviser, he could...