Yesterday, <a href="http://www.kcet.org/news/ballotbrief/campaign-finance/los-angeles-2013-…; target="”_blank”">Los
Angeles' KCET-TV put up a database on it website</a> to show who's
giving to candidates in the current city and school board elections. You can see which city officials, business
people, and others are giving, who's getting contributions from

What is the best way to prevent high-level officials from
participating in matters involving departments or agencies where
their close family members are employed, without doing this
unreasonably, that is, excluding situations where the family members
have no influence and will receive no benefits?<br>
<br>
This is the question that has been raised in Baltimore by council

“It’s much to-do about not much. I’m trying to run a city, and
you’re worried about people’s relationships?” These are the words of
Mount Vernon, NY mayor Ernest Davis, who is the subject of IRS and
FBI investigations, and now an investigation by the city's ethics
board, according to <a href="http://www.lohud.com/article/20130227/NEWS02/302270055/Mount-Vernon-Eth…; target="”_blank”">an

The Los Angeles mayoral race has unearthed some conflict of interest
allegations that are worth a look. There are three interesting
issues. One, how much stock ownership in a public company is required to give rise to a conflict? Two, what about ownership of a competitor?
And three, what if you don't know a public company whose
stock you own is involved in a matter before you?<br>
<br>

I have done a poor job in this blog covering administrative ethics,
that is, the field of study involving the professional conduct of
public administrators. Writers on administrative ethics have done a
poor job of covering government ethics, that is, the field of study
involving conflicts of interest. Although the two fields overlap,
they exist in mostly separate worlds.  For example,
rarely does an administrative ethics professor show up at a Council
on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) conference, and my work (among

[Note: I have made changes throughout this blog post, based on a February 25 e-mail message from the COG executive director]<br>
<br>
It should feel good when a pet idea of yours becomes a reality.
My pet idea is the regional ethics program, whose biggest
successes have been of the countywide variety, such as Miami-Dade
County and Palm Beach County, FL (there is also a Broward County
program, but it is run by an inspector general). There are a few
regional ethics commissions in Kentucky, and one in

Some very interesting issues arise out of a past (and present)
conflict situation that has become an issue in this week's mayoral
primary in the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas
City, KS ("UG").<br>
<br>
The conflict situation appears simple at first glance, but it is not. In 2007, a UG commissioner
became the paid executive director of the <a href="http://andakck.org/&quot; target="”_blank”">Argentine Neighborhood Development

Does a former ethics commission member have a special obligation not to
make misstatements with respect to government ethics matters? This question arose
from a 2010 case in Florida I just came across, where the state
senate president hired a former chair of the state ethics commission
as his attorney. According to <a href="http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/state/ethics-panel-approves-haridopolos-se…; target="”_blank”">an

According to <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/a-revolving-door-in-washington-t…; target="”_blank”">an
article in yesterday's New York <i>Times</i></a>, U.S. Senate majority leader
Harry Reid's spokesman said with respect to questions regarding his
hiring of a tax adviser away from General Electric, "The impulse in
some quarters to reflexively cast suspicion on private sector

<br><b>Self-Evaluation and Getting One's Bearings</b><br>
To change oneself (and to support change in one's environment),
self-evaluation is required. Before you change, you have to have
your bearings. The problem is that, unlike evaluation of others,
self-evaluation is rarely rational. It is more commonly emotional,
taking "the rosiest possible interpretation of the facts," according