by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
With a City Council subcommittee scheduled to review pending ethics legislation next week, the City’s Ethics Commission met Thursday to discuss its future structure.
The council Rules Committee formed a subcommittee to examine the pending ethics legislation.
The subcommittee consists of Chair Art Shad, Vice Chair Richard Clark and members
Bill Bishop, John Crescimbeni, Stephen Joost, E. Denise Lee and Clay Yarborough.
The subcommittee will meet at 2 p.m. Wednesday in council chambers to discuss proposed ordinances 2011-167, 2011-197 and 2011-232.
Proposed Ordinance 2011-197 was discussed at the Ethics Commission Thursday. It establishes the Office of Ethics, Compliance and Oversight to coordinate ethics training, compliance and oversight issues and to staff the Ethics Commission.
“If you look at this bill as it is written, it’s not just the Ethics Office that handles the Ethics Commission, trains staff and handles complaints. It actually is an inspector general function,” said City Ethics Officer Carla Miller.
“You’ll see the language in (the legislation) on oversight, fraud, abuse and things of that nature that this office would also be able to handle,” she said.
“It all falls back on City Council, because City Council handles the budget of this office,” she said.
Miller explained that the new office won’t cost the City any more money than what is currently used for different offices.
“I think we could do this with existing positions easily,” said Miller.
She discussed combining the Ethics Office, Inspector General and City Ombudsman in the new Office of Ethics, Compliance and Oversight.
City Inspector General Pam Markham, attending Thursday’s meeting, was asked her opinion of the legislation.
“When my office was established, it was established like the state or federal government inspector general’s office. Our major function is looking for efficiencies in operational audits, actually going into areas and looking how we can improve operations,” said Markham.
“It’s not so much investigation. We report to the mayor, and I feel it’s appropriate that we report to the mayor because we are helping him administer the government,” she said.
Markham has noticed how her current role would be different under the new legislation.
“That’s a little bit different than when you start talking about the inspector general and Ethics Commission,” said Markham.
“There’s going to be a little bit of conflict. It’s going to raise questions about my office of eight people coming in to handle the Ethics Commission. I feel like I’ll lose some of my independence and my cooperation for the job I do with the administration,” she said.
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