For those of you who are tired of talk about "witch hunts," this
quote will be a great relief:<blockquote>

"I'm concerned about a zealous ethics staff chasing down rabbit
holes when there is no rabbit."</blockquote>

The arrest of Miami Beach's former procurement director last October
may not be news, but there's a lot to be learned from this case. The issues include personal discretion, alternatives to fully competitive bidding, access to information, and debarment rules.<br>
<br>

<a href="http://www.minnpost.com/two-cities/2013/01/minneapolis-considers-confli…; target="”_blank”">An
article on the MinnPost site this week</a> brought to my attention
a report done by the Minneapolis Ethical Practices Board (EPB) on
conflicts of interest involving development-related boards (planning, zoning, preservation) in Minneapolis and

<b>Update</b>: January 30, 2013 (see below)<br>
<br>
Four years ago, I wrote <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/556&quot; target="”_blank”">a blog post</a> about
the conflict at the heart of the local redistricting process, where
the members of a legislative body are deeply involved in decisions that will
determine whether or not they, and their party or faction, are
re-elected. This conflict shares some similarities with the

Officials and lawyers tend to act as if they were Platonists. That
is, they talk about conflicts of interest as if they existed in a
ideal form, divorced from reality.<br>
<br>
Many government ethicists, including me, see conflicts of interest
as things that exist in the real world, a world where the public
is concerned that officials seek to use their office to help
themselves and those with whom they have special relationships, such
as family members and business associates. What is odd about the

The FBI had to work hard for years to get a grand jury indictment of
former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin yesterday (a searchable PDF of
the indictment is attached; see below).<br>
<br>
A lot of what occurred could have been stopped a long time ago if
the city and state had better ethics laws and the city's ethics
board was able to initiate complaints and hold public hearings on
ethics issues that came to its attention. It appears that every time
I read the indictment of a mayor or council member, the misconduct

I learned this week that the board I administered until last July,
the New Haven Democracy Fund board (the Fund is a public campaign
financing program for the city's mayoral election), no longer has
enough members to hold an official meeting. The seven-member board
has three members, and it needs four members to have a quorum.<br>
<br>
This is an especially serious problem because there is a mayoral
election this year, and the mayor, whose responsibility it is to

<br>
It's rare to find a newspaper article that truly appreciates the
work a city ethics officer does. So I'm including the entire article
below. It's <a href="http://members.jacksonville.com/news/premium-news/2012-12-26/story/jack…
the Jacksonville <i>Times-Union</i></a>, and Jacksonville's ethics officer happens

Here's an odd ethics program rule. According to <a href="http://www.centralkynews.com/amnews/news/amn-junction-city-will-take-is…; target="”_blank”">an

One government ethics question that does not have a general answer
is whether boards of education or school systems are under the
jurisdiction of city or county ethics programs. The answer is
sometimes, but generally not.<br>
<br>
There are several reasons for this. One is that many, probably most
school systems have different boundaries than cities and counties.
Generally, these are regional, including all or parts of multiple
cities, towns, and counties.<br>
<br>