Staff Writer
The City’s Charter Revision Commission recommended that it be done. A City Council member was prepared to go to Tallahassee for it. The new City Council President has made it a key issue.
And now the Ethics Commission will stay in its own backyard in an effort to return the City’s Ethics Code to the City Charter.
At a meeting Wednesday, the Ethics Commission discussed a resolution to request the code be returned to the charter and plans to submit it to City Council in August.
It’s been a winding road.
The Ethics Commission had submitted a resolution to the City’s Charter Revision Commission requesting its support to amend the charter to include the ethics code. Charter Revision endorsed it, but City Council has not shown interest in pursuing any of the recommendations Charter Revision presented in February.
City Council member Glorious Johnson recently sponsored a J-Bill (J-1) that would place the amendment in the hands of the Duval Delegation, one of the government bodies that has the ability to amend the charter.
This course of action was pursued, Johnson explained during the July 19 City Council Rules Committee meeting, because the amendment referred to the Ethics Commission’s authority to review conduct of constitutional officers. It was unclear if local government could impose laws on constitutional officers.
Members of the Rules Committee encouraged Johnson to present the ordinance to the City Council to effect the change and she agreed to withdraw the J-Bill and to rewrite the legislation to address City Council.
“I don’t care how it gets done,” said Johnson. “As long as we get the ethics code back in the charter.”
The question of why the legislation is needed has been asked in City Council chambers recently, and one answer may have been triggered by another question at the Ethics Commission meeting Wednesday.
“If the City Council passed an ordinance to put the ethics code into the charter, then they could not take it out without a voter referendum?” asked Braxton Gillam, vice chair of the Ethics Commission.
“That’s my understanding,” said Jon Phillips of the Office of General Counsel, who serves as counsel for the Ethics Commission. “But I’m not speaking for the Office of General Counsel, that’s my opinion.”
The ethics code is currently a City Ordinance and can be changed through a vote of the City Council. If the City Charter were amended to include the ethics code, it would be more difficult to change or remove.
Because of the difficulty in changing the charter, the commission took time Wednesday to review what it wanted to include in the amendment.
The commission unanimously agreed to restate the position it presented to the Charter Revision Commission in September of last year.
It asked to amend the charter to: “reinstate an Ethics (Commission) into the charter, as was originally done in the 1968 Consolidation Act ... to reinstate authority of the Ethics (Commission) to have jurisdiction over ethics and conflict of interest laws for all officers and employees of the consolidated government, including agencies and boards; to reinstate the ability of the Ethics (Commission) to subpoena witnesses and documents; to provide a dedicated funding source for the (Ethics Commission); to allow the (commission) to hire staff; and to provide a structure for membership on the (commission) that promotes impartiality.”
Additions and changes to those amendments included the addition of the ability for the Ethics Commission to levy civil fines for ethics violations.
Suggestions for funding the commission included allowing it to submit a budget request to the City Council (the Miami model).
A second funding suggestion was the same except the commission would have a guaranteed budget for the first two years. After the two years, “the commission would be able to pursue a judicial remedy if its financial support became inadequate” (the Philadelphia model).
The third suggestion included a fixed percentage of the general operating budget being appropriated to the commission; about .75 percent was suggested. Also, both the executive director and inspector general would be independent positions.
“We’ve discussed moving (Ethics Officer) Carla’s (Miller) position from an employee of the mayor’s office to an employee of this commission,” said Gillam. “But that’s not moving a position from one place to another, it’s creating a vacuum. What we’d be doing is creating another position and that will be tough to do in the current environment.”
Miller explained that new positions would not have to be created. The positions already in place would just be adjusted to be more independent.
Ethics Commission Chair Kirby Oberdorfer was nominated to work with Phillips to prepare the new resolution for City Council. The Ethics Commission is scheduled to discuss, and possibly vote, on the new resolution at its meeting at 5 p.m. Aug. 25.
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