2009-06-10 Board of Ethics Minutes

Home

to the Ethics Code, what we're dealing with today, and the petition items you listed down. Okay? REES: Okay. The complaint was that the man was not treated fairly. CHAIR: Right. REES: Okay. CHAIR: So if you could focus on that. REES: And was treated discourteously. CHAIR: Okay. REES: So okay, I'll it takes two steps in the Webster's American Heritage Dictionary to get from the word whacky to frivolous. Now the filing of a lawsuit, an impeachment is a form of lawsuit, it's a form of legal procedure. It is considered frivolous if you do not clearly state your reasons. They are very easy thresholds. Misadministration. Maladministration is a little bit harder. Nonfeasance and misfeasance. These are very easy thresholds. They are very easy things to accuse someone of and prove that they actually committed those acts and are deserving of impeachment. But you must state these clearly in your pleadings in your complaint. I read through the whole case history there. I'll guarantee you that the word whacky was bandied about through the whole court system. It was bandied about through the whole public, saying wow, this is a whacky filing here. So when you speak of courtesy and fairness, human beings use language in relevance to each other, in relevance to all of our circumstances. Whacky, to me, is a comment that has been made about myself and my testimonies- -and maybe even you feel that yourself right now, it's quite possible. In the English language it is not taken as necessarily a negative connotation. It's far less down the line than saying somebody's crazy or somebody's mental, you know. You say, well it's kind of whacky. But that's the process, let's let it go through, let's see what happens. And I'm going to leave it at that. Let's just hope that we have rational folks here to decide these matters. And on 2009 -3, this complaint - -this is a whole different matter, and here, if whatMr. Cole is claiming is true, then I wholeheartedly support him, that I don't think it would be proper for Mr. Ashida -- again, if these facts that he's stating here are true - -to go to a department, the police department, and say take no action on a complaint that was filed against himself. And I honestly have a hard time believing those facts would be true, because I know Lincoln Ashida somewhat from being an acquaintance at Council meetings, and I don't think he would slip that low. But again, I don't know the facts CHAIR: - -To interrupt you for a second again, I don't see where he used those words, take no action, specifically. My opinion, just to answer what your opinion is, any time and we've dealt with this in the past anytime a public official is hold on is there's a claim made against them, and it's filed with whatever department, I feel that there's reasonable guidelines to allow for them to respond to the accusations against them. Okay. That's part of the process. Go ahead.