I just saw this report from the Dallas Morning News regarding the city council vote on whether or not to exempt members of their Municipal Management Districts from existing ethics rules. The prior plan to give members a blanket exemption from Dallas' ethics requirements looked to me to be an extremely dangerous move/precedent not to speak of being a ready-made, full-tilt PR nightmare. (My original post on this matter - "Dallas To Exempt Municipal District Board Members From Ethics Requirements?" - can be found here.)
I'm glad that they seem to have tailored the exemptions to only those allowing consonance with the rules of membership on the board (i.e. that members must also be stakeholders). However, the Morning News piece only says:
"The rules that passed Wednesday uncouple board members from the requirement that they have no financial interest in the MMD.
That rule had to be changed because the law requires MMD board members to have some stake in the district."
I have yet to find information on exactly how the new requirements read. Anyone have more information? I'd love to know more about how the new requirements actually ended up looking. On the surface it certainly looks like a major improvement was made from the original proposal but, again, I will look forward to learning more about the exact nature and extent of the changes from that original plan.