2007-03-14 Board of Ethics Minutes Regular Session

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Board of Ethics Minutes of Regular Session March 14, 2007 used to be and it is easier access. The gift disclosures are upstairs, and sometimes we have reporters come and ask for copies of those. WJ: That is something we get to look at right? BLT: Yeah, we get to look at gift disclosures. There is a difference I noticed on the state level. There are a lot more things that go through the State Ethics Commission. Like the ones that are filed with the County Clerk are filed with the Ethics Commission on the State level; both the public and the confidential ones. I think the reason that they set it up here with the Clerk is that the Clerk is there everyday and they are generally the keeper of official information and it was easier to have people go to the Clerks office to get copies of material rather than go to Corporation Counsel. So you have one repository for the public stuff. I think they also keep copies of the gift disclosures. WJ: Is there any further comments on this? JD: BJ, so in terms of text revisions to the code, only that note referring to Section 13- 10 is the only addition? BLT: Yeah, from the last version. Now I need to clean up the typos and play with the font. We were waiting to see if the Council would amend the list of people who have to file. So I have been playing with it. Should it be "see the list," or my preference is probably to plug in the names of boards and commissions that are required to file. AL: I like that, but then that means if it gets revised we need to remember to revise it. BLT: Then I started dating each edition. It is such a hard time on the computer ... Draft 1, Draft 2, what date was that? So today's draft on the computer is the 3 -14 -07 draft. AL: My favorite part of this is the Ethics Checklist. I really like it. That is really a friendly document. It seems to hit the ordinary things people are going to be up against. KS: It is an interactive, and I want to know if .... do we, can we discuss at this point the procedure or the process of this from new employee through Human Resources. BLT: I think that is a legitimate discussion. The whole point of us coming up with this is to insure that it gets disseminated to newly elected officers, new department heads, and new employees. KS: Are you, should we write a draft procedure so that the people that need to sign on to this, perhaps Human Resources, the department heads, because other people are going to be responsible for this full activity. I am sure there will have to be some negotiation from you to them, like "What, another piece of paper? No way." So that we can give it to the Council as here is a brief procedure which could be implemented department wide ... 5