2005-10-12 Board of Ethics Minutes Regular mc

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FRANKEL: So again we have a legal issue here, as much as anything else. I tend to agree with you personally, I tend to concur with your first observation. Spouse should be up front there. Whether someone knows, needs to know if you're doing business or working for the County, whether you inherit your grandfather's farm in Vermont worth, you know, $300,000 is pretty moot, or whether it's some mutual funds or , it's pretty moot as it pertains to County business. So maybe—is there any discussion among the Board on this issue, ? Ms. Leithead -Todd, you're probably in the lead position on this one, as well BLT: - -I took a look at the State, the State law on financial disclosure as well as the County Code provisions, and I note that the language is substantially different in terms of what is required and whether you are required to disclose the interest of spouses and children. Whether there is no specific provision in the County Code on reporting spouses and children, in the State's law, there is specific language that states that, though there's an exemption for candidates for State elective offices, candidates for State elective office are only required to provide their own financial interest, but for all other persons, they're required to state, in addition to the financial interest of the person disclosing, the financial interest of the person's spouse and dependent children. CHAIR: State law. BLT: That's the State law. The County Code provision is different. That language is not there. So for me, and I did not do a further analysis, I guess there were two issues on this. One is whether the State law on financial disclosure which may apply to people running for office, which would be the County Council members, may require further disclosure on those forms than the County Code may require for other people, and so I have not reached a conclusion on that but did not have a chance to take a look at that because there is separate language. But when you are evaluating what the codes and provisions mean, and especially since so much of the County Code provisions were basically borrowed from the State, the absence of the language in the County Code that specifically says that you have to disclose your spouse and your children, and the fact that that language is in State law and the drafters of the County Code are aware of that language, and the fact that I also recall back in 1993 or 1994 discussion on the County Council when they were looking at disclosure statements and the discussion up on whether they should require disclosure of the financial interest of spouses and dependent children, and this was—in that time I believe the discussion was not so much on the context of the financial disclosure but they were doing the gift disclosure law, and there was some discussion about it and the County Council discussed and reached a conclusion that they did not want to require disclosure of spousal interest, and my recollection is, one of the council members who was most concerned about it happened to be Keola Childs, who was married to a Greenwell at that time, and he was very concerned about having to disclose any interest that his wife had because they were substantial, and they had that discussion on the Council and they elected not to require in the gift disclosure section the spouse, and they were also looking at the other Code, so I can't give you a definitive answer on that, but 21