MIN CHC PH 1999-06-16 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

• at a later date and I will bring those others up at a later date. But the second thing - RAY: Well, I would encourage you, Del, to bring them up now. PRANKE: Well, I'll write them out because they're a little more complicated and a little more - But the second thing concerns the Board of Ethics. If you look in the County Charter under the Section 14-5 Board of Ethics, there is no place designated for the Board of Ethics to be placed in this county. Unlike any other board or commission which has a specific place, it goes under the Mayor's Office, etc., the Board of Ethics has never been placed anywhere. I urge you to put forth, to allow the voters to vote to put that Board of Ethics under the County Prosecutor's Office. As currently, five members of the Board of Ethics are appointed by the Mayor, approved by the Council and then those members sit in judgment with the Corporation Counsel giving them legal advice and the Corporation Counsel sending legal advice for any county member who comes before that board, you got the same law firm on both sides of the issue, talking about, fighting, whoever the citizen is who says hey, I think there's something wrong here and it's no wonder that in the past ten years, there's been one case where a person was found to be in some violation of the Code of Ethics. Maybe we are just that good in this county but I don't think so . I would urge you to put the Board of Ethics under the Prosecutor's Office or to allow us to vote to do so and two, to change the way the Board of Ethics is chosen. The Board of Ethics should be, there should be a nine member panel. This year the Board of Ethics has failed to meet three times out of six. I believe that's correct and I keep getting these things that say the Board of Ethics meeting has been canceled because they couldn't get a quorum of five people. I suggest we have a nine member Board of Ethics and that each member of the district, the person who's elected to the council in that district shall appoint that member with the entire council approving or disapproving of that member going on the board. That takes this out from under one person, the Mayor really making all the appointments. It's true that the County Council can deny somebody but that seldom happens. The Board of Ethics should be appointed by each member of the County Council from that district and they may never appoint somebody because they may not be in office when such a vacancy comes but when a vacancy comes in that district, then whoever is serving at that time in that district should appoint that person. Okay, that's essentially what I had to say. The two things, the County Code - RAY: Okay, any questions for Mr. Pranke? IRVINE: Yes, I do have a question. RAY: Ms. Irvine. IRVINE: Concerning the Sunshine in our Charter here. Is what you wanted us to do was take out that it would happen at the request of an individual involved that we •