2007-01-10 Board of Ethics Minutes Regular Session

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Board of Ethics Minutes of Regular Session January 10, 2007 BLT: I don't know how far back is sensible, because we have been putting stuff in storage. KD: The financial disclosures we have all here. BLT: No, no, it is the opinions which are all in storage. We would have to go looking into the bowels of the earth. AL: But do we need to do that? BLT: We should do it prospectively. AL: Just start. BLT: Just the ones we are doing now and as we have time. The new ones are being scanned, but what I am seeing here is that I will have to do separate copy with stuff deleted out, then have a public folder that is available. So I will make a public folder. AL: And then if we had some way that people, beyond us, would have an index to look back on opinions. BLT: I will talk to the web. AL: Not all the way back in storage, but starting now. It does seem that if each board has an opinion, but five years from now they've got to hear the same thing, then five years later the same thing. KS: But society changes, and times change and this little thing about the rules of evidence. Well, I am not a lawyer so I don't know what the rules are, but it is a two - sentence thing, page three. We are not bound by any strict rules of evidence so in terms of keeping records back and going back to look back at your precedence what does that mean. The other thing it says any evidence which is.... BLT: Well the rules of evidence are talking about criminal matters. There is something called `fruit of the poisoned tree. " If I got material without a search warrant then I go to court and they said you didn't have a search warrant and even though it is a signed confession it is inadmissible. Well, Board of Ethics, if there is a signed confession out there, or there is a letter that somebody wrote, some evidence, it doesn't matter how someone obtained it. Someone rummaged through the trash and comes to the Board and says "Look I have this letter" you can look at it because it is not a criminal proceeding. You are not bound by those rules. And then the other rules are like "Well, I heard her say that he said" kind of thing. You are allowed to hear that and you can decide whether that second -hand statement has any value. It may just be something that leads you towards information. In court that would be inadmissible the fact that, I come in and say "Bob told me that Wayne went to that dinner" I wouldn't be allowed to say that. I would have to get Bob in here to say that Wayne said that. Where as in here I could say 0