2012-12-12 Board of Ethics minutes

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in which that officer or employee has a substantial financial interest,” or in “a private undertaking in which the officer or employee is engaged as legal counsel, advisor, consultant, or representative, or other agency capacity.” So it would be the use of your official position, or taking official action over something that you would benefit from. MR. BALSIS: I think what Arne’s saying is that by virtue of you presenting these options, and one of the options being the organization for which you also do consulting, that would be a possibility of influence, especially in that perception. The question I have is, has this been previously discussed with your superiors, and what has been the reaction of that? MR. KITA: I don’t think we discussed it directly, but my superior was aware that I did do some outside contracting. MR. BALSIS: If I’m to give advice at this point in time, my advice would be for you to have a formal meeting with your superior, perhaps another person in the room at the same time, just to make sure there’s clarity of whatever discussion comes about. And come up with a methodology whereby there would no longer be a perception of how you present options. Perhaps someone else at that point in time comes in to present options. But that discussion, in terms of procedures and processes, would I think at this point need to be between yourself and your superior in order to eliminate perceptions of impropriety. MR. HENRICKS: Yeah, I would also—when I look over it all with your supervisor, one thing that you should keep in mind when you look at it is does your position with the County give you an advantage over anybody else that’s contracting on the other end with those providers? You understand what I’m saying? If you have any kind of advantage because of your position with the County, I’d be very careful—whether it be an advantage of influence or you-kind-of-owe-me-because-I did-this-for-you kind of advantage, something like that. You know what I mean? If you see any of that there, then you may be in a problem area, I think. Okay? MR. KITA: Well, there may be a perception, but I guess that would be the concern. MR. HENRICKS: Yeah, but where there’s perception usually means that there’s actually something there. MR. BALSIS: What you want to do is you want to eliminate that perception of impropriety. I don’t think anyone here is saying that there is impropriety. MR. HENRICKS: I don’t think we know enough about it, have to see it in operation to see if it’s an impropriety. MS. SCHOEN: Board members, that’s actually the difficulty I think the Board is having is that it’s not specific, so it’s difficult to say doing this does violate the Code. So if you could come back and be more specific. I see that you say in a few instances, three to four times a year, you provide back-up, in which case you then refer. I mean, there could be a