It's been six years since I last wrote about local government ethics in Tennessee. In <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/mc/ci/recusal&quot; target="”_blank”">a January 2007
comment to the forum on recusal</a>, I focused on the fact that
the University of Tennessee's Municipal Technical Advisory Service
(MTAS) (which operates in cooperation with the Tennessee Municipal

In <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/excellent-report-recommending-ethics-…; target="”_blank”">a
blog post two weeks ago</a>, I welcomed an excellent, although
sketchy, set of recommendations by a national law firm that amounted

The death of Robert Bork is a good time to learn from the biggest mistake in his life, one that may have cost him a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. It
involved his failure to deal responsibly with a superior's conflict of
interest, and his own, since his superior forced his conflict situation onto Bork himself.<br>
<br>

<b>Update:</b> December 19, 2012 (see below)<br>
<br>
I am always amazed at what contraptions people are willing to set up
to justify the participation of a city attorney in the ethics
program of a large city or county that has sufficient resources to
hire an ethics commission staff member or independent ethics
officer. I raise this issue because controversial ethics reforms are
being voted on today by Fort Worth's council, and one of them
includes making a city attorney's ethics advice an "absolute

In February, I wrote <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/search/node/%22nonviolence%20and%20government…

Transparency in government should not be limited only to officials.
Disclosure rules should also apply to everyone seeking special benefits from government, such as
contracts, permits, or grants. For one thing, without transparency
on both sides of every transaction, it is impossible for the public or officials to know if
there are any conflicts that particular officials need to deal with.<br>
<br>
One popular way to get around transparency is the shell company. A
company can easily be set up so that its ownership is secret. This

No one wants a political government ethics program, and yet the
people who most often worry out loud that it will be political want
it to be political. This apparent paradox can be explained by looking at the
various meanings of the word "political." Which of these meanings is
most important to a government ethics program, and which of them
are, well, "just politics"? And what can a government ethics program do to lessen politics?<br>
<br>

Canadian mayors don't appear to be having a good time of it lately,
ethicswise. <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/high-level-officials-obligation-seek-…; target="”_blank”">Montreal's

Annapolis is an unusual little city in many ways. It may only have 40,000
residents, but it's the state capital, the county seat, the home of
the U.S. Naval Academy, and equidistant, and not far, from Baltimore
and Washington, D.C. With respect to government ethics, the county
for which it is the county seat, Anne Arundel County, has <a href="http://www.aacounty.org/ethics/index.cfm&quot; target="”_blank”">a relatively good

In a quality government ethics program, every official and employee
involved in a matter publicly discloses any possible conflict and
withdraws from the matter. But what if a city or county does not
have a quality government ethics program? How is the public to know
whether conflicts are being handled responsibly?<br>
<br>