2018-08-10 Charter Commission - Laserfiche WebLink

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Charter Commission -1 July 13, 2018 MR. HENRICKS: This is Mr. Henricks with my answer. When you talk about recusal, it's always a personal decision, the Board cannot compel you to be disallowed from participating. So, if you feel, you know that smell test thing says, "Hey, wait a minute, my involvement in this is not just policy-making wise, but I feel a certain bias that will benefit me." If it tells you that, then that's the time, perhaps, for you to say, "I'm going to sit this one out." If you're not certain, you feel like it's okay but you can see how there may be an appearance of it being wrong, then I would say you go to the Board itself and get that clearance that—if it's provided to you, that would give you the confidence that you could proceed and move forward without any concerns that your vote may be casted as invalid at a later point in time. But again, at any point in time if you feel yourself that your involvement, your discussion and then your vote are coming from a place other than everyone else, if it's coming from a personal place where you may benefit, then that's an option that you have to say, "I'm going to sit this one out." And that would include the discussion as well. But, sometimes you said before, disclosure is sufficient. It depends on the circumstances and I think the best thing that we would do is as we move forward and these things come up, and you get the floor, you'd say, "Here's my situation," and then we could go look at those things and provide you with the best advice for that specific situation moving forward. CHR. ADAMS: Chair Adams. My view, we're talking about Charter amendments here, not ordinances. So, there are many perturbations that can occur as a result. So, anything that—so, the idea that any of these things are going to have some direct benefit or disadvantage to any of us is—there's not a nexus there necessarily for me. So, the idea that you may have some—that's exactly why any of us are on here is because we live here in the County and we have personal connections with a variety of the things that are happening. So, I would just—I think it's wise to follow the advice of our commission attorney and analyst, but I would also ask us to think about there's plenty of places where we could say this is going to have a personal impact on me, and so, I should recuse. We need to have a broad wide-ranging discussion using all of our experiences so that we come up with the best amendments that we can come up with. So, I would just leave it at that, I guess. MR. HENRICKS: And if I could just say for the record, I completely concur with what you're saying, that generally, what you're going to be looking at are broad - scaled issues that aren't likely to have a tangible personal benefit to anybody for that matter. So, well said and I agree, and I want to be clear on that. MR. YOSHIMOTO: So, to wrap it up, these are all options for you to consider if or when they should come up. I just think that the Board of Ethics is there for a Page 33