2012-10-10 Board of Ethics minutes

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on the union fiasco. Where do they get this authority, that they can schedule a meeting on workers’ time and then either demand that they attend it or allow—the County allows them to attend it? Who has oversight in this situation? The County legally terminated three employees back in January. Fast forward, the union, from what I understand from reading it in the paper, the union had the authority to reinstate that union worker. Where do they get this authority from? At the very least, on this particular meeting fiasco, the union should reimburse the County for the money, for the monetary loss that the workers generated, and/or the members should have their paychecks reduced, those who attended. And it says they were allowed to attend. I wonder if they were allowed or required. Thank you for your time. Mr. Dill called up R. J. Hampton, who had signed up to testify on all agenda items. MS. HAMPTON: I am very pleased to see the communication from OIP. I want to thank Sativa Sultan for having made the call. We became concerned. We have many issues with OIP in terms of how they respond to things. What am I talking about? The agenda. I don’t know about the executive session, but we have had a complaint into the OIP about agendizing and not being able to understand what’s on the agenda--one of them specifically as to the ethics of the Building Code. This made the paper. I am one of the people who put in a complaint. To agendize five items under one agenda, and not to describe it, especially something that is as important as penal codes and criminal things that might happen to people that do things wrong in the Building Code—it needed to be described. That’s why that meeting that day was so out of hand, to the point where the chair, Pilago, he called for the question, using parliamentary procedure. One reason why I believe that OIP has put this down now is because we’ve been agitating them. They are behind in a lot of things, and our case is 20 behind. But this issue of agendizing and transparency, and the ethics of how the County Clerk and the County Chair interact—I believe that we have to stop this. The County Clerk is the personal secretary of the Chair, that they can be in cahoots and do as they please, and upset all tradition and procedures? And to undermine people’s feelings about what they do in their jobs because they’re playing poisonous politics? That the west side put Dominic in that chair to do exactly what he did? If they want to control this island so bad that they don’t want to communicate with the very people who live here and just do as they please? And what is today? Today is a change day. Today is--I’m glad, chair, that you recused yourself on this issue. It shows that you have the wisdom to at least know what your responsibility is to this community. And if there is anything—like I told you last time, and I hear Lincoln saying, everybody saying, this is wake-up time. I’m not piling on. I’m going to stay. And if there is a question you’d like to ask me, ask me. I’m staying. On to the business of the Board of Ethics—oh, please, and while you’re at it, please allow us to develop the scope along with you, give us a way in which to communicate with you. I tried to call Corp Counsel to talk to you, Renee, but you don’t call me back. I’m not complaining. You’re busy, and you’re going to be busy, busy, busy in the next couple of weeks, because the complaints are going to come fast and furious until you fix this Charter, till you fix this Ethics Code, and you fix this County. I don’t need to say anything else about this. You know there’s something going on here. And I hope that you’ll dedicate your reputations and your ability to set this ship—this ship is stayed straight—to get to the bottom of it. Take your time. We’ll come. I’ll spend the gas money. I’ll be here to watch you deliberate over this, because we’re not going to have this in 2013, Corporation Counsel