2003-12-10 Board of Ethics Minutes REG pc

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KI: Aye. CHAIR: Aye. Any opposed? It is passed. BLT: Mr. Chairman? CHAIR: Yes. BLT: I just wanted to note for the record that we skipped over Statements from the Public because there are no members of the public, just so that we can reflect that in the minutes. CHAIR: Okay, that's correct. New Business. Bobby, do you want to do the Sunshine Law for us? BLT: Yes. I know it's hard to schedule getting people in, and you all have other things in your normal lives to address. So, what I've done is, I've reproduced the material that was given to our attorneys as well as our department heads and members of Boards and Commissions who were able to make the presentation on December 4 that was presented by the Office of Information Practices. So you have two documents in front of you. One is basically an overview done by the Office of Information Practices on the Uniform Information Practices Act basics. So if you turn to that one. What they've done is they've put together, think this is kind of a nice handy bundle that you can put in your manuals as a handy reference. We've got copies of the most recent versions of Chapter 92F, which is the Uniform Information Practices Act. Added to that is the most recent revisions to that Act. And this is just basically what the public has a right to. And so, things like copies of minutes, copies of items that are on your agenda. So, I don't want to run through the whole thing, because the statutes are here and you can review it at your own leisure. But I think it's a nice thing to add to the other materials that we've already provided you in the past which are the Sunshine Law provisions. But in terms of this, I just want to make a couple of comments that the public has a right to look at basically the materials that you review unless there's some exemption like a privacy exemption, so personnel records, Executive Session. Executive Session, however, once there is no longer a need for the privacy of that Executive Session or to basically keep that information confidential, then the public does have a right to access the minutes of Executive Session. So, there's been a recent opinion regarding investigations, that I want to bring to your attention, and I will be probably providing a copy of that. It pertains to there was a complaint made regarding a deputy attorney general and then, subsequently, there was an investigation conducted by the attorney general's office in to whether this deputy had violated any rules, regulations, laws, . Normally, when you do an investigation, you think of that as a confidential, personnel matter. However, because the investigation had to do with a member of the public's complaint and possibly how that attorney general handled the complaint or handled the member of the public's request, the public member's name would have been included in the