Policing elected officials and city employees and instructing them on ethical matters is a full-time job for the city’s ethics Program Coordinator, Stacy Reardon. She oversees the department ethics officers and has been in the position for three and a half years. Her door is always open to her fourth floor office located next to Legislative Services. Reardon hopes that the ethical training given to City employees will help them both at work and home.
Job description?
“Basically I work closely with the ethics officers. Every department has a department ethics officer (DEO). They are a resource to employees that have questions and they also provide some training. I also work with the Jacksonville Ethics Commission, which is made up of nine appointed volunteers. Their primary job is to look at legislation and the ethics code and suggest changes to City Council. We have new employee orientation each Monday, and I train them on the ethics section which takes about an hour. We try to make it fun and interesting. We show the new employees a 30-minute ethics video we put together based on the reality show ‘Survivor.’ That has pretty much been a hit. I’ll soon be doing the Sunshine and Public records portion which is about 20 minutes. We have a system of ethics officers and the mayor appoints two. One is in the General Counsel’s office, Steve Rohan, who is a deputy general counsel and works in legislative affairs. He’s also the attorney who represents City Council. The other is Carla Miller, a private attorney who volunteers with the the city. Steve and I also train boards and commissions on the ethics law at their request.”
What new projects are planned for the program?
“The goal is to up the PR of the program by doing more posters and really get the office known. Another idea is an Ethics Week, which will be similar to Law Week. It will be a week of presentations on ethics with speakers and training. One of the Ethics Commission’s interests is to create an Ethics Hotline that will tie into the city link line, 630-CITY. We would like to use some of the elected officials and really get them involved, and the goal is to unveil it during Ethics Week of 2006.
I would actually like to come up with some computer-based training program. JEA has a great online ethics training program but we still have to mold it to what we need. That is something we’re working on for the coming year.”
Is everybody issued a handbook?
“They get a packet of information at orientation and that has the highlights of the code including instruction on gifts, secondary employment (they have to file a form if they have outside employment) and campaign ethics. When they get to their department, their DEO goes through an orientation. Generally, you can’t accept anything from anyone who does business with the city or anything over $100 from a lobbyist, but different departments have different standards.”
What training did you have for this position?
“I didn’t have any training. I was given the code book and I just went through and highlighted in the book. I came up with a chart of what the code requires and brought it to the ethics officers and asked what was being done and what wasn’t.”
What are some common violations?
“In terms of questions, people call most about gifts. A lot of times it’s not a violation, just the perception that it really wouldn’t look good, so we advise against it. The second one is conflict of interest, especially on the boards and commissions because they’re generally volunteers and usually involved in business development.”
— by Carrie Resch