Advisory Opinions

One of the news media's biggest problems is failing to look at the
big picture and, instead, focusing on specific events and issues.
This is especially true when it comes to government ethics, where
the news media generally considers, and calls for, ethics reforms on
a piecemeal basis.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.innovateli.com/4844-2/&quot; target="_blank">An article on the
Innovateli website yesterday</a> shows that this same limited

When gifts from lobbyists to government officials are discussed,
what they consist of is usually money (including campaign
contributions), meals, trips, and services. A pending Missouri House
bill  (2059; attached, see below) seeks to extend the
definition of reportable "gift" from lobbyists in this context to
include:<blockquote>
<br>
sexual relations between a registered lobbyist and a member of the
general assembly or his or her staff. Relations between married

Eula Biss's excellent book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Immunity-Inoculation-Eula-Biss-ebook/dp/B00KUY4D7…; target="_blank"><i>On
Immunity</i></a> (Graywolf Press, 2014) is not about legislative
immunity, but about immunity to diseases. And yet there is a great
deal of food for thought in it about municipal ethics.<br>
<br>

<h3>Mixing Election Oversight and Professional Contracts</h3>

<p>I just read a classic work of philosophical psychology, <em><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=oX0taPXw9CwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=f…; target="”_blank”">Self-Deception</a> </em>(Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), wherein Herbert Fingarette takes an interesting approach to a phenom

<p>An example I often use for why government ethics laws are only minimum requirements is that these laws cannot include friendships or romantic relationships, because these are impossible to define with any precision. When a relationship is not included because it is undefinable, this does not mean that one should not treat this relationship like any other special relationship and withdraw from matters involving that individual. One should go beyond the minimum requirements of the law and withdraw.

<p><a href="https://lawoftheland.wordpress.com/ target=”_blank”>The Law of the Land Blog</a> has recently summarized a number of
California decisions regarding proximity, a conflict of interest
issue that, for some reason, seems to come up primarily in
California, due in large part, I suppose, to its 500-foot rule.<br>
<br>
In <a

<b>Call for a State Municipal Lobbying Code</b><br>
It may be a big holiday week and the end of the year, but there has still been
some news on the government ethics front. <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2014/12/28/close-local-lo…; target="”_blank”">The
Boston <i>Globe</i> has called for</a> the state to institute

Does the "broken windows" theory, as first stated in <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/3044…; target="”_blank”">a
1982 <i>Atlantic</i> essay</a> by George L. Kelling and James Q.
Wilson, apply to government ethics? The theory says that, if small
things like broken windows are ignored, people will think that no
one cares and, therefore, they will break more windows and move on

According to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2014/06/27/fairfax-county-…; target="_blank">an
article last week in the Washington <i>Post</i></a><i>, </i>the
Fairfax County (VA) Attorney fired one of his office's assistant
attorneys because she was elected to the council of a city within the