2006-12-13 Board of Ethics Minutes Regular Session

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Board of Ethics Minutes - Regular Session December 13, 2006 BLT: This was from personal experience of having seen employees feel like they had to do whatever they were told to do because they were appointed. That is how Rene Mansho ended up in jail. She was having them do campaign activities. But it wasn't just campaign activities; she was having her employees do Boat Days. The Boat Days were not an official county function. Rene went to jail for that too, it wasn't just the campaign stuff. She had to pay back. Sometimes elected officials have a hard time seeing the difference between what is community benefit verses official county functions. They feel like this is my employee, this is my staff, they have to do all these things even for these other organizations, even though they are not county organizations. That is how Rene Mansho got into big trouble. AL: In that respect, this kind of document actually could be used to set up dialog between an employee who has questions and the person asking them to do something. It gives them a little power over their own actions. BLT: On page 3, the ones in bold, number 2. Number 1, of prohibited activity was something I did and got into trouble for. I wasn't paid to be in the ad. Someone asked me if I would be in a piece that would be advertised. I said sure, I think that is a great project. Then afterwards, it was oh boy, I didn't get paid and I'm not affiliated with the business and I don't have any action in front of me that I am voting on but it still looked like I was endorsing it as an elected official. Part of that was my problem in that I didn't understand that they were going to use the word councilwoman. I thought they were just going to say Bobby Jean Leithead -Todd. If you are a private individual you can, but they used the word "councilwoman." So, number 1 was me. Number 2 was two different incidents with elected county officials. None of these made it to the Board of Ethics. One was where a non - partisan political forum was being held by a councilmember who was not running for re- election. I checked later on this and we had a real disagreement in the office, and we said it was a campaign activity and you should not be doing that, you should not be using staff. The staff person said "Well my councilperson said that he hires and he fires and that I have to do it," despite the council chair stating that this should not be done on county time. What made it worse is that after the non - partisan political forum where the councilmember was not running for re- election he publicly endorsed one of the candidates that it appeared at the forum, so it made it even murkier. Then people questioned whether the forum was done for the expressed purpose to endorse this person. I talked to some people at the state ethics staff and they said even if it was a non - partisan activity, even if you weren't candidate that you could not use county resources for that unless the county was sponsoring the event. But you, as an individual, could not say "I am going to hold this forum" and use people. It is political, it is campaign focused. If you have people running around doing that, people have regular work that they are supposed to be doing during county hours, and the campaign thing should be non - county hours. The other one, number 2, refers to another councilperson that was hosting a party function at the county building, which in and of itself was not a problem; however in the newspaper they listed the County Council's secretary number as the contact, and that's what we objected to. I was staff at the time and said you cannot do this, this is improper. You can use the 14