<i>With the first quotation of the week, let's start at the beginning:</i>

We become just by doing just acts. -Aristotle

<b>Understatement</b>: After one county district attorney recused himself from prosecuting the man who hired him for his job, the neighboring county district attorney accepted the case, despite the fact that he leased office space and had accepted a thousand-dollar campaign contribution from the suspect's nephew, who happened to be listed as the suspect's defense attorney. 'To suggest that that's a conflict of interest is to suggest that I have an integrity problem, which is simply not the case,' said the D.A.

It is difficult to be an ethical politician or administrator, or even a citizen, without a basic understanding of logic. It is also difficult to appreciate others' unethical conduct without a basic understanding of logic.

By logic I do not mean the opposite of irrationality, but rather critical thinking, and specifically an understanding of logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are probably the most frequent form of unethical conduct in municipal government. They involve the conscious or unconscious attempt to falsely persuade or manipulate people.

My blog entries must often seem like attacks on business interests. One reason is that conflicts are usually about personal financial interests conflicting with a government official's obligations to the public, and our democratic values require that the official's fiduciary obligations take precedence. And where there are financial interests, there are usually businesses.

<p><img src="files/Top10Films.png" /></p>

<p>We have been batting this around for a while, and have come up with the following list:</p>

<h2>The Top Ten BEST ETHICS Movies of all time</h2>

<h3>1. Man for All Seasons</h3>

<p>Paul Scofield brilliantly plays Thomas More who stands up for his principals against the ultimate difficult boss, King Henry VIIII. In the end, he dies for his faith and his principals, but he gets to become the patron saint of lawyers.</p>

Some towns have proximity rules, that is, rules that require officials to recuse themselves from any matter dealing with property within a certain distance of property they own or rent. But it is hard to have a set number of feet or yards. A distance appropriate to an urban environment is very different from one appropriate to a rural environment.

You don't hear too much about recidivism in the municipal ethics world. One reason may be that it happens, but often at different levels, as a politician moves up the ladder.

It is very common for public servants to say (or others to say for them) that they did not feel they had a true conflict or did not understand the law. And often this is true. But why so often do those same people often try to hide the fact that they did not disclose their conflict (or the extent of it) or do something about it until they had no other choice?

The big story this week from Largo (not Key Largo, but a West Coast town), Florida has a little bit of everything in it. I don't think any ethics code would deal with what occurred, but the situation certainly raises a number of important ethical issues in a municipal government context.

The story involves a city manager's announcement that he was going to change his gender, and, one week later, the city commission's vote (5 to 2) to put him on paid leave and begin the process of firing him.

The Supreme Court of California has handed down a decision that could have a significant impact on conflicts of interest cases. In <a href="http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/people-v-chacon-33704"&gt; The People v. Chacon, S125236 (February 8, 2007)</a>, the court found that Chacon, a former council member charged with a conflict of interest, could not use the defense that she had acted upon the advice of the city attorney.