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bringing a civil suit to the court doesn’t mean that other entities, particularly administrative
<br />entities, necessarily executive entities also have the authority to decide those suits. Nobody
<br />would say that because a court didn’t take, or because somebody didn’t bring it to our court that
<br />that court’s jurisdiction is subsumed by an executive agency. And so, I’m struggling with the
<br />idea that just because there is an option by various members of the County the whole variety of
<br />us that can bring a concern to the Board that that means that the Board is only one of many that
<br />can interpret and provide a finding of violation to an ethics violation, when in fact the Code itself
<br />talks about the Board being the entity that interprets ethics problems for County officers and
<br />employees.
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<br />Ms. Leithead-Todd: In all honesty I have multiple occasions in which Departments and County
<br />employees would send requests to Corporation Counsel because they were trying to avoid going
<br />to the Board of Ethics with a publically noticed hearing. So they would say, hey, if I do x, y, and
<br />z, is that going to be a violation. And we would render, as the attorney, we would say well, you
<br />know this section of the Code says this, and based on, you know, prior decisions, this clearly
<br />looks like you will be found in violation, and then they go, okay then I won’t do that. Because
<br />what they’re frequently looking for is, there are a lot of people who don’t want to end up on
<br />your agenda with their name on it because even if it’s confidentially held their name is on the
<br />agenda and then it becomes Department Head seeking, you know, opinion, and then people start
<br />speculating why are they seeking an opinion, and why is it being held confidentially because
<br />they have that right. So a lot of times we will get Department Heads and employees asking, you
<br />know what about this and we’ll say, you know at the end, in terms of whether you want to do
<br />this, you are basically risking. So we’ll render opinions as to whether we think it’s a violation
<br />and there were multiple times in which employees and elected officials would decide not to do
<br />something and it was kind of with the caveat that it wasn’t a formal opinion, it wasn’t a public
<br />opinion. But, you’re basically telling them the odds are that, we’re rending a decision in the
<br />sense that the odds are if you actually go to the Board of Ethics this is going to be found to be a
<br />violation of the Code. My concern in terms of just the employees is that you want to cite all the
<br />possible things that they have been found to be in violation of. And so, you might say, hey that
<br />this is stealing. No it’s not a court, if you want to get a criminal, you know, adjudication then it’s
<br />got to go to court, but I don’t think you want to tie my hands and say that I couldn’t say in my
<br />disciplinary action that you broke the law by stealing gas from the County. I wouldn’t want to
<br />have my hand tied and not be able to say that, oh this was a violation of the Code of Ethics
<br />because the Code of Ethics says that you can’t take government equipment for personal use. I
<br />would want the full arsenal in my investigation and sure, I could fire the employee and if they’re
<br />subsequently found possibly in a criminal proceeding not to have stolen, they got some defense
<br />for that, then that might invalidate my disciplinary action. But, I have to act very quickly and
<br />generally when you’re looking at things, you do it with a lot of thought and you do it
<br />independently, you have people assigned to it and you want to cite every possible thing that they
<br />have done wrong, whether it’s the email policy, whether it’s the Code of Ethics. The concern I
<br />have is that if you tie the hands and say that I can’t put that in my letter when I’m disciplining
<br />somebody that it’s a violation that in many cases it’s almost rendering the Ethics Code useless in
<br />terms of being able to discipline employees if I have to go to the Board of Ethics every single
<br />time that I want to put that into a disciplinary action, and part of that is the amount of time I have
<br />to try to process something before I can discipline someone. It’s in the County Code, it says that,
<br />you know I can use any other actions available to me, but if you’re going to go down that road,
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