Sample Ethics Laws

While each of the following ethics laws may contain some deficiencies, such as lack of enforcement authority for the ethics board or an unnecessarily vague gifts provision, on the whole they offer a substantial improvement over Article 18 of the General Municipal Law and illustrate the types of effective local ethics laws municipalities have adopted. The Municipal Lawyers Ethics Columns  link contains four columns from the Municipal Lawyer that discuss such laws and provide model provisions:

Enacting a Local Ethics Law-Part I: Code of Ethics (Adobe PDF File)
Enacting a Local Ethics Law-Part II: Disclosure (Adobe PDF File)
Enacting a Local Ethics Law-Part III: Administration (Adobe PDF File)
Local Ethics Laws: Model Administrative Provisions (Adobe PDF File).