Staff Writer
Following the work of the Charter Revision Commission, the City’s Ethics Commission has worked toward establishing an ethics code and ethics commission into the City’s charter.
Just how the group goes about it was a main point of discussion during the group’s meeting Wednesday.
Council member Glorious Johnson has led Local Bill J-1 that would seek the Duval Legislative Delegation to add such an ethics policy, ethics code and ethics commission to oversee “employees ... of the City of Jacksonville, its constitutional officers, and independent agencies and districts, whether elected or appointed, paid or unpaid, and to the officers of and employees of the school district.”
During the meeting, Council member John Crescimbeni, sitting in on the meeting, questioned the necessity of sending a J-Bill to Tallahassee when the City Council or a citizen’s initiative would do the same without fear of powerful lobbyists swaying a decision.
Because the resolution includes jurisdiction over independent authorities, which were created at the State level, the question is whether to include the language in the final J-Bill or add it, along with other Ethics Commission format details, via another way.
Many of the potential details of a commission format were presented to the City’s Ethics Commission by several Florida Coastal School of Law interns, who researched components of ethics commissions in 11 other areas, including four in Florida.
The Florida counties included Broward, Miami-Dade, Orange and Palm Beach. Other areas included Anchorage, Alaska; Honolulu; Kansas City, Kan.; Nashville/Davidson County, Tenn.; New Orleans; Philadelphia; and San Francisco.
The recommendations, pooled from different cities, included a nine-member commission with appointments from numerous parties; the inclusion of jurisdiction over independent authorities; a choice of three budget styles with both percentages of total budgets and a line item in the city budget as options; the hiring of an ethics officer responsible for compliance, training and hotline administration; and an independent inspector general responsible for an anti-corruption program.
Lobbyist registration, transparency, gifts and conflict of interest among departments were included as topics of jurisdiction.
The City’s Ethics Commission will use the recommendations to decide what should be included in the potential J-Bill and possibly referred to City Council over the next several weeks. After conferring with the General Counsel’s Office, it was determined both the J-Bill and council avenues of amending the charter could be pursued at the same time.
The Ethics Commission will finalize recommendations at a meeting the last week in July.
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