Happy Fifth Birthday, Atlanta Ethics Office! The Ethics Office has
celebrated its birthday with <a href="http://atlantaga.govhost.com/client_resources/government/boards/board_o…; target="”_blank”">a
40-page report</a> on its first five years of existence. It is well
worth looking at.<br>
<br>

Last month,<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/640&quot; target="”_blank”"> I wrote</a>
about the responsibility of lawyers and other professionals for doing
something about the deeply unethical conduct of two judges in
Pennsylvania who unjustly, and to their own financial benefit,
incarcerated hundreds of juveniles.<br>
<br>
A few days ago, the New York <span>Times</span>

<b>Update:</b> February 5, 2010 (see below)<br>
<br>
Alaska and a small utility district in Texas. Who would have thought they could have anything in
common. But they do: representation without taxation.<br>
<br>
Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal by NAMUDNO (Northwest

We are told in school that one of the reasons the American Revolution
happened is that colonists faced taxation without representation. This
is just about as bad as it gets. But there is also such a thing as
representation without taxation. How bad is that? What effect does it
have on government and, more particularly, on government ethics?<br>
<br>

Recently, the Jackson County (MO) <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/674&quot; target="”_blank”">county legislature decided</a>
to exclude not only county legislature members from its new ethics
code, but also county attorneys. This exception is hidden square in the
middle of a 58-page code:<br>
<br>

Hiding a conflict of interest can lead to much worse problems than
appearing before an ethics commission and getting your hand slapped, or
even getting slapped with a fine. A criminal case in Winston-Salem, NC
this week shows how bad things can get.<br>
<br>

When I saw the headline from the Anchorage <span>Daily News,</span> "Palin Calls Blogger's
Ethics Complaint Bogus," and saw that it had to do with clothing the
governor wore, I thought I might write a piece about using ethics
complaints for the purpose of political harassment. But when I read <a href="http://www.adn.com/palin/story/735153.html&quot; target="”_blank”">the article</a>, I

I have treated the legislative immunity litigation in Rhode Island as
the least relevant to other states and to local governments, because the ethics program was set
up pursuant to a special constitutional convention. But <a href="http://www.northhaveninfo.org/resources/RI+CC+brief+0309.pdf&quot; target="”_blank”">an
amicus brief</a> filed this week by Common Cause of RI and the League

Ethics codes do not generally have rules about the involvement of
spouses of government officials in citizen groups. But this can create
serious appearance problems, as it has in St. Charles, Illinois, an hour west of Chicago, according to <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-school-couple-23-mar23,0,2…; target="”_blank”">an

There are two interesting developments going on in Texas right now, and
two bills that will be heard in committee today.<br>
<br>
One involves a request to the state legislature by El Paso County to
allow local governments to give their ethics commissions teeth (they now
can only censure).<br>
<br>