2004-05-12 Board of Ethics Minutes REG pc

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want to go out on open contract type of deal to let people bid. And that would become rather... Mr. Ashida: Cumbersome. CHAIR: Very cumbersome. So I think your rotation system is as good as you're gonna get. Like I said, at this stage, it's my personal opinion. What does the Board desire? BLT: Mr. Chairman, I did bother to go and check on the gift guidelines for the State Ethics Code as well as City and County and the language of their Ethics Code are practically identical to the County's. The only difference is that the City and County and the State, you're allowed to have gifts up to a value of ... their disclosure is 200 dollars. County is at 100. And I also went and looked whether they had dealt with this, and basically, what they consider gifts of aloha, thank you, thank you gifts as well as promotional gifts that are of relatively small value. And in their case, the cut off from Honolulu, was something that was less than fifty dollars. That they did not think that that was a problem, because they didn't think that you could reasonably incur that with a small item that the purpose of that was to influence somebody in the awarding of a contract. So I just xeroxed that and passed that out because they have had similar petitions. And I guess there's a difference between what you mean... think you might personally do, as opposed to what the law and our Ethics Code requires. And so the question is, whether this is a gift that is given specifically to influence or would influence the official in giving the contract the business. Is this something that was not the practice with the private secretaries. So, in other words, the way that analyzed it is, was the gift giving here the same as they gave to other members of the public. Were they treating this government office different. Were they treating this employee differently. And they looked at the value of it in determining whether you could accept it or not. So I just xeroxed that and brought it to your attention so you could take a look at it and see if it's relevant in the other Ethics Commissions. SC: I think that's why I asked how many jobs you get a year and how much the value is. Maybe if there was a cap on how many you received, that would make it more palatable. Mr. Ashida: I don't think we could control that, it depends on the number of... SC: Times you've used them? Mr. Ashida: Times we used them.