2010-09-08 Board of Ethics Minutes

Home

BAUMAN: From my perspective, I don't see where Ms. Espin's working for the security guard company would have any negative impact on us. She does not have the authority to approve the invoice. She's primarily checking arithmetic, noting discrepancies, and either confirming the correction with the vendor or providing the explanation for someone else to ultimately decide whether the invoice is approved or not. That is just one of the many invoices she does approve, and we would be able to assign that one responsibility to another staff member, if that was a concern. But she's not in a position to provide any benefit unfair advantage to the security guard company or vice versa. She's not apart of the bidding process at all. She does not ultimately approve the invoices or anything like that, so from my perspective I don't see any problem with her part -time work as a security guard. CHAIR: Okay. Mr. Torigoe? TORIGOE: Thank you. I might just very briefly add that the reason that we're here is really because Ms. Espin came to us, and asked us if we thought that there was any kind of issue with respect to her taking this part -time job, and so I want to just give her due credit on the record and make sure you understand that this is because she was concerned that there be nothing left to question. And that's why we're here this morning. And based on Ms. Bauman's summary and what was presented in the petition, our basic view is that what Ms. Espin does is really purely clerical, and even the checking of the arithmetic is basically just checking multiplication. And if she happens to see that there is some question about the number of hours there, then all she does really is ask the question, get the answer, log it down. And again it's not a matter of her having discretionary authority to deny payment or approve payment. As the petition states, there are three levels of other people within our department that review these things and have progressive levels of discretionary authority perhaps, but not at Ms. Espin's level. And then of course it goes to the Purchasing Division to make sure it's compliant with the contract, and then it goes to the Finance Division for final check and approval of payment. So in that light, again, from our perspective we don't see a real issue with it, but we understand that as the Board of Ethics that's why we're here, is to get your interpretation of how the Code should apply in this case. So thank you for your time. HENRICKS: Okay, the thing I was trying to get I feel like I keep harping on it, but this bothers me so much and I can't go for ward until I can get rid of it - -is that at some point she's either going to notice or not notice something wrong there. Now does she can she just say okay, I'm going to pass it through, even if I know that something's wrong. To me that bothers me. She could do this, if she wanted to, saying I'm not going to mark it up as being wrong, or something like this. I'm not saying she would do this. Now remember, I'm not accusing you. I'm just asking, are you in a position are you in a watch dog position, is what I'm trying to say, on these, on these CHAIR: - -So in order to, in order to maybe alleviate the potential or even just appearance of a possible, that this could possibly happen and again, we're not accusing you, that you'd do this. But we need to think from the public's perspective, when they look at it. Would then reassigning that specific account to someone else satisfy your would it alleviate or eliminate that possibility or the appearance of possible 12