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investigating and you’re going to discipline them, you will cite every possible provision that they <br />have violated in your disciplinary action. And the concern I had was the potential for the Board <br />taking a position that as an employer, as a Department Head that I could not cite to the Code of <br />Ethics in disciplining employees, because I feel that it’s part of the arsenal of things that you can <br />go to. You could say that it’s a violation of the e-mail code, that says that you can’t use the <br />email for personal use. You could say it’s a violation of the Code of Ethics, and you could also <br />cite to whether there were other provisions, either in Department rules or in State law or in the <br />County Code and you would cite to all of those things in disciplining. And the reason that I was <br />concerned about saying that I couldn’t is you typically have a relatively short timeline in trying <br />to discipline. Because the way we discipline employees is sometimes while we’re doing an <br />investigation we suspend them without pay. And it’s much faster for us to do the internal <br />investigation and come to conclusions, then to leave them out without pay while we would seek <br />an opinion on whether I could cite to the Code of Ethics. I don’t believe that my citation would <br />necessarily be definitive, in the sense that the employee, if they disagreed with my citation to the <br />Code of Ethics, they could go to the Board and ask for an opinion. If the Board would then <br />render a decision contrary to what was in my disciplinary action then that part of the disciplinary <br />action would be basically invalidated. But if there was, well let’s say that you said stealing <br />gasoline was not a violation of the Code of Ethics, it would still be a basis under other laws for <br />me to discipline. It would just mean that I would have to amend the disciplinary action to say <br />that while it’s a violation of other laws or other codes, it’s not a violation of the Ethics Code, but <br />it wouldn’t invalidate my disciplinary action, it would just amend it. It would be different if the <br />sole basis for my suspending somebody was my conclusion that they had violated the Code of <br />Ethics and then they asked for an opinion and the Board subsequently said, no it’s not a <br />violation, because the Board would be the final arbiter. And in the case where it was the sole <br />basis for disciplining somebody, then it would invalidate the disciplinary action. But if there <br />were other valid basis for disciplining an employee then the fact that you cited to the Code of <br />Ethics would not invalidate the disciplinary action. And that’s basically, because part of the <br />problem is that the Code does doesn’t say that you have to seek an opinion. The language in the <br />Code says you may ask an opinion, and in common practice, my experience was that the <br />majority of cases that came before the Board, this was my experience when I was on the Board, <br />were either employees trying to ask in advance of doing something whether it would be a <br />violation. It would be typically somebody who was going to start a business or take a secondary <br />job and they wanted to make sure that they weren’t going to get in trouble. So they would, out of <br />an abundance of caution, come and ask the Board first, so that they could subsequently waive the <br />opinion and say, I didn’t violate the Code by taking that job. So that was a substantial segment <br />of the opinions that we had to deal with. The other were primarily members of the public who <br />would make allegations and file claims against elected officials or County employees, and they <br />would make allegations that there had a been a violation and those would come. There were <br />virtually no cases that I have ever saw while I was on the Board or the attorney for the Board <br />where you had a Department asking whether an employee had violated, and it may be that if you <br />want to go in that direction that you feel that it cannot be used, that you need to amend the Code <br />and make some things mandatory as opposed to a choice because it does say may, but I would be <br />very concerned about going to a road where you would ask or want every Department to adopt <br />their own Code of Ethics and then, you know, discipline employees based on adopting rules <br />similar to the Code because the danger there would be you would have multiple Departments <br />with multiple sets of rules that might vary from each other, and so I think that would be very <br />2 <br /> <br /> <br />