Aug 01, 2022 Board of Ethics on 2022-08-01 6:00 PM

Ready? I'm ready. Alright. Good evening. And welcome to the City of Denton Board of Ethics meeting, Monday, August 1st at 6pm. Calling the meeting to order. So we need to start by approving the minutes from last time. You can see the quorum. Oh, and if the quorum is present, yes. Just say it out loud, right? Yep. Alright. Now let's consider the approval of the minutes for June 6th and June 29th. May I move that we approve all three? Three. The minutes from May 2nd, May 9th, and May 23rd. I believe that's a different agenda. We're looking at 6/6 and 6/29. That's a hard time. Well, then do you need an agenda? I do. Thank you, Senator. Okay, so can we make a motion to approve the minutes from 6/6 and 6/29? I move that we accept the minutes from both those dates. Nice. Good. Perfect. Alright, so minutes are approved. Oh, yeah. Excuse me. You need to take a vote. Oh, a vote. Okay, we'll hold a vote now. Anyone in favor of approving the minutes from 6/6 and 6/29? Any opposed? I understand, okay. Motion is passed. Okay, item B, receive a report and hold a discussion and take necessary action regarding potential recommendations to clarify procedures to dispense or receive gifts. It's defined by city of dental code ordinance, Chapter 2, Article 11, Section 2-273 for revisions B, gifts. So getting started, it seemed like what we were looking at was sort of the word "conveyance" from my understanding of like defining what that meant. This was really kind of an issue that I identified recently based on some discussions with some city officials. And we have this gifts section in the ordinance, and we also have a gifts disclosure form. There's nothing that is clear to me in the ordinance that actually requires anybody to fill out the form. And so I really just want to get some clear direction so that we can incorporate that into the ordinance. I have an assumption about what you'll say, but I just want to make sure that it's clear so that anybody who's reading it knows what to do. Okay. I was reading it and kind of my takeaway was, you don't have it on this slide, but under 6B6, yeah, wait, six, yeah, donations. It says that sentence, "conveyance of the gift prohibited by this article to the City of Denton or non-profit both," all that. It seems like if we had some clause like that just saying, "conveyance via the affidavit regarding gifts received," like somewhere, that that would cover what you're saying? So I guess I can bring back language whichever way you guys would like, if you would like to require that they fill out an affidavit disclosing that they received a gift and what they did to it. Discussion? Any thoughts? I just want to make sure that the gift could also be to a family member. Is that covered under that? Because I've heard of cases where a city official gets offered a college fund by someone for their kid. It seems like a sneaky way to... Yes, I'm reading it. It says for a city official, I don't know that it's clear, in the Conflicts of Intersection, it does discuss, but I don't know that that would apply to this section. I kind of think we should say to the city official or a family member. We can add that. Or we can all look at it and see how it's kind of written previously so that we're using the same definitions. I just don't like that consanguinity stuff. It's not something that most people understand. I think that people should be able to read this ordinance and get that, "Oh, that's not okay." This consanguinity, I know what it means just because I've sat on this board, but I just think it should say or a family member. I think we could potentially have a discussion about that at a future meeting if there's consensus to do that. I don't think it would hurt. It probably would have helped to say that because I wouldn't even have thought of that, but somebody might think of that since you thought of that. Somebody did. Madison, do you want to look at it and see if it's defined previously? Is that what you were kind of saying? If it's said above, then it might be a redundancy to repeat it? I believe there is a definition. It's in the conflict of interest thing. But that's where they talk about consanguinity. I know that y'all had a discussion about what that meant historically. Cindy says it was relative as a conflict of interest. Relative is defined here using consanguinity. If there's consensus, we could have a discussion at a future meeting about the definition of relative. In that section, if you would like to apply that to the gifts, we can easily just put relative for now, for this discussion since this is on the agenda. What Wechsler does is he just lists out no children, no siblings. It's like eight or nine possibilities, but it's real clear. So maybe put that on a future discussion point? Is there consensus, which means at least a majority of you have to agree that we would discuss that at a future meeting? I got two at least. And this is the definition of relative. So we have two for the definition of relative needs to be discussed at a future meeting. Just for the definition of relative. Yes, I'm sorry. I think that's too narrow. Consanguinity is too narrow? No, I think the discussion is too narrow. We have to be really narrow and specific. Then let's just discuss what the definition of relative is and then also let's see what else. That's for future, not today. Then the second thing that I've heard is adding to the gifts section, which is on the agenda today, so we can take action or give direction to somewhere in here, include that it's a violation of an article for a city official or their relative or something along those lines. And then they go back and look at what that means. The last piece was if we're going to make it so that they need to use the form, right, which was the original question. Three direction points. We've gotten through one. I think I've heard consensus for the second one to add relative to this. And for the third one, if they do accept a gift, either because it's an exception under here or because then they donated it or they use some sort of remedy for this section, do they need to disclose that for the affidavit form that is already in existence? It was not necessarily clear in this ordinance that they are required to do so. Yeah, I think we should look at language for like making it clear that the affidavit form needs to be used. That's all the points that I heard and the one that I came here with. So anything else on this gift section since we have it on the agenda? Anything else? No? All right. Okay. So item C. This is speaking about, I don't need to read it all out, right? Item C. I don't know. You have to read the whole thing? Yeah, go ahead. Receive a report, hold a discussion, and take necessary action regarding potential recommendations to amend City of Denton Code of Ordinance, Chapter 2, Article 11, Ethics, Section 2-282, Disposition. So I think this is coming from our discussion with City Council, right, that we're talking about this? So this came from the last meeting that we had and we discussed areas that we thought there could be potential improvement from after processing Ethics Complaint 22-001. This was the highest priority, so I'm coming back with potential sanctions or research on what other cities have sanctions for if they find a complaint to be frivolous. Just a brief recap, there's only really two cities that we are considering benchmark that have a frivolous process. Up on the screen is a very summarized version of what they have sanctions for if they do find a complaint frivolous. And then I can answer other questions. The model code doesn't really clearly have a process for frivolous complaints as well. Are we open to discussion? Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, yeah, let's have a discussion about it. Sounds great, yeah. I love the Dallas Ordinance, although I think we probably need to talk about the length of time, but it's crystal clear. And if we had had something like this when we had our frivolous complaint, it would have been so much easier. So I really like, and I don't like putting the San Antonio one had a numerical amount. I don't like that. And I don't think our board has the authority to charge a fee. Yeah. So that would be, if you wanted to go that direction, we'd have to really figure out how to do that. San Antonio has the longest ethics code I've ever read, and it, they have an entire office that administers it. So yeah, I guess there's, I mean there's staff time with our process too, but yeah. Anyone else? I prefer the Dallas version over the San Antonio version. What did you guys think about, I think it was two and four years? Yeah, so from what I can remember, it's two years if in, I have it here. In five years. If in five years no other complaint filed by the complaint was frivolous, and up to four years if no, if another complaint filed by the complaint was deemed frivolous. Okay. So up to two, if no previous infraction, up to four if there was a previous infraction within five years. I love it. Yeah. Because then we would, we could do less. Okay, I'm totally good with that. I personally didn't think that that was a discouragement for, like as far as the sanction goes, if the intention was for like libel defamation or slander, like when you get in you do your frivolous report and you'll take your two years on the bench and then you can come back. So personally I kind of liked the San Antonio, but it seems consensus is more the Dallas, which I can get on board with. Yeah, I think that, I thought San Antonio struck me as more litigious and I, I really don't want, I don't want that to be the purpose of this, I mean the purpose of this to me is to correct people's behavior and to keep things ethical. Also if somebody did do something that was defamation of character that I would think it would be the person who was injured would be able to get a lawyer to sue that person for that, and that's not really our role. Our role is to not hear, not allow approval. It's a civil answer. I do believe our ordinance has a clause or a statement in there somewhere that says that you can use it as part of a civil suit if you want, like the complaint, the respondent could, don't remember the exact word. I do agree with you on the, I agree with you on the notion that if it's just a, a frivolous complaint and the intent was to, for defamation then yes I agree that just the, just the benching of that person is probably not enough of a deterrent. And the only thing that I personally like on the Senate 21 is that, is the attorney's fees, because if you, you know, if it's defamation and the person has to hire an attorney then there is attorney fees associated with that. So I like that portion of it because it is not. I, I can see what you're saying. Not a penalty. The penalty part, I agree with you that's more like a, like if it is defamation then take that into a civil, civil arena. However, the, the attached cost to somebody that has to defend their character is, is what I. May I ask a question? I know we have an attorney here. My understanding is that in cases in the court where attorney's fees are supposed to be paid that it's pretty rare that, that those ever get paid. Is that, I guess I'm just asking for an opinion. Yeah, it just depends on the specific case. I mean, there are statutes that say here are the types of cases you can get attorney's fees in. Sadly, I think defamation of character happens all the time in politics. And while I don't like it, I kind of hate pushing it into a legal situation because you could do that. You could go hire an attorney and go after it and I can certainly see cases where people would want to do that, but I just don't think that's our. I mean, I hear what you're saying, but I just don't think that that's our thing. And I like what you said about what our role is, and I think that maybe that would be best to consider our role as stopping it from happening in the future, but maybe like. I think should ideally be something higher than what the law covers. And so we want to hold people to that higher standard and I think we want to hold it, hold them to it in that, for lack of a better word, a loving way. Because if you then break the law, then that person has recourse through that. As it seems like we're in mostly consensus about the terms for the Dallas. Okay, and so Scott and I, one of the things that we've discussed is potentially having kind of a full second set of hearing procedures for footballist complaints. So you probably won't see this language next time because we're going to try to figure out what that will look like. And I would assume my assumption is it will probably go in that separate section could be wrong, but I think it's clear the direction is you want to do this two year four year five year within five years kind of framework. So we can have, you know, more nuanced discussion about exact time lengths once we have a fuller picture of what a hearing would look like. Because whatever that was in the code, and I don't want you to bother to pull it out, when we got to that point, we all kind of looked at it and went, what does that mean? Neither one of them made any sense. And it was kind of like, it just sort of took my breath away. Like, I don't know, I have no idea what you do with it. It was too much, it was like the least, and I don't know what it meant. Yeah, and this would be basically to add new sanctions. If we wanted to have a discussion about the current sanctions and adjusting them, you could at a future meeting. We'll have a future meeting topics, but we could do that. Does anyone want to add that for a future meeting? You mean to take that out of the code? To review the current sanctions that would be used against a respondent who was found to have violated the ordinance. I would like to review that because it just made no sense. So I move that we, do I need to move for that? I think we just need consensus to put it on a future agenda, right? And I got direction to include a similar thing in the Dallas framework for those sanctions? Yes. Receive a report, hold a discussion, and take necessary action regarding potential recommendation to amend the Code of Ordinance, Chapter 2, Article 11, Ethics, Section 2-273, first actions. This also really dates back to March when we decided we wanted to have a full discussion about our conflict of interest section with how that was defined and how it worked in the art of the ordinance. We discussed breaking that up into five different discussion topics since it's so big. We discussed some disclosure and recusal procedures last meeting. Now we're talking about financial considerations and prohibitions. I did research basically to see what financial prohibitions there were in our benchmark ordinances and the model code in about half of the benchmark municipalities had a very general kind of statement of, they're prohibited from doing an official action or not taking an official action if their economic interest would be affected in a way that's distinguishable from the general public. That's kind of the general sense. They're all awarded a little differently. The other municipalities are similar to Denton in that they have specific, you are prohibited from taking an official action on something that involves a company that you have 5% of stock or that you make $600 in a year from or does that make sense through specific financial thresholds? Those are shown on the slide, the other cities. They all generally have higher ordnance thresholds based on their research. So that's kind of the first point, just a background on that information. We don't need to discuss that at all or just move on. Am I correct in saying the $600 number was something that was being called into question in the meeting? Am I mixing things up? So that was part of the campaign. In June we had a work session and it was in attendance with the city council where we discussed the packet of six proposed amendments with city council that you all had. All of them were accepted except for one which was to add to the conflict of interest definition that you couldn't vote on something essentially if you had received more than $500 in campaign contributions from an individual business entity. There was another word there, I don't remember it. And city council, there was not direction to proceed with that to add that to the ordinance. I can summarize and then I missed something from what they said about it. I think a lot of their concerns, some of their concerns were the level of the threshold was too low. And then they were also a little concerned about there wasn't clarity on like, well, in what period would that take place, right? So is it of all time or, you know, because it wasn't clearly spelled out in the language that was presented. So that's kind of where that was at. Doing research, San Marcos is the only one that clearly prohibits an official from taking action or not taking action if they received campaign contributions and their level is at $500. The model code does also prohibit that. They said it had a level of $200 and it has, I think it's typically in an election cycle. That's how they define it. The model code's pretty old. So I also did some research into just campaign finance laws with other cities, which is, I think, a little outside of our purview, but just to look at some of those levels that's not in your backup. So I don't know if we can actually talk about it, so never mind. But it doesn't have one. We did kind of get into a discussion with city council about that. This sounds like maybe we should have campaign financing an ordinance, but I think that would, I mean, so, but they didn't direct the board to look into that specifically, if that makes sense. Sorry if I brought us on topic there. No, this is, this was the next point. Okay. So, could I ask for clarification on what the direction from city council took to assist at this point with this? So, I would, my understanding was that they were not against the inclusion of it, per se. Several of them were for it that day as written, but some of them had concerns, like I said, about the time period, a little more clarification, and some of them had concerns about the level, the threshold level at $500. I think their specific direction was for us to do more research and compare it to other codes. Which is what you've done. So, yes. Thank you. Thanks for doing that. So from what you're telling us is the $600 is not unreasonable because the model code has a lower threshold and the San Marcos one has a lower threshold? The proposed was $500. So it's at the same level as San Marcos. I'm sorry for some reason. That's all right. Yeah, the model code is a lower threshold. I'll just add some campaign finance laws have thresholds for how much you can accept. They're now, San Marcos has one that I believe is tied to this $500. It might be a little bigger. I'm not certain. But they sometimes tie it to like the CPI or something like that so that it changes over time. Does that make sense? On this issue, while I love the model code and I've made that really clear, it's pretty old and I don't think we should look at the number that comes from that. I would agree with that. I mean, first of all, personally, I still don't think that $500 is unreasonable. But I think that the other thing that we should definitely consider adding is election cycle or election cycle. It is possible that that would need to be defined a little more clearly. So the way that I would interpret that would be from maybe standard election date to standard election date or some other or I don't really know that much about exactly how that works. Sometimes they run off elections and things like that. So any thoughts on that? Should it be defined as when it comes to election officials by term? The term that they're serving? Well, that would mean that I think that there should be one amount for -- if there's a runoff, I think there probably should be a separate amount. But I think what the issue is that there are people in Denton who don't like it that outside forces from other cities are really making these big donations. This would not prohibit that. It would just prohibit -- No, I know, but the amounts were large. In case there's anybody watching them, including this would not prohibit that. I think election cycle works because one election cycle would be the general election. If there's a runoff, that would be a separate election cycle. You might want to have said that really clearly. Yeah, okay. Also, there might be some charter definition or other -- I mean, we can look into that and come back. When we come back with language, I'll give you some more research on it. So working definition right now is standard election date, standard election date, but more research. Make sure we understand if there's any other thing in the ordinances that might make it easier for us. So that was clear. I'm not sure about the amount. It seemed like you were certainly still in favor of 500. I don't know that I heard. That will be included in that way. Okay. The third point here is kind of about -- we've had some discussions about payments made by officials to people and if they should be able to vote on items involving people that they make payments to. There's nothing clearly in any other code that would prohibit that. This ties back a little bit to an issue that the mayor raised at a city council meeting a couple months ago regarding payments made to an individual who was then appointed -- that were not disclosed before that individual was appointed to a board. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense. Can you say it one more time because I didn't catch it fully? So the mayor raised a concern that the city council had voted to appoint an individual to a board, but that individual had been paid an amount of money by a council member and that was not disclosed prior to that vote. And so the mayor and the city council, there was consensus to take that back to the board of ethics to see if there should be disclosure requirements of that or even prohibition on that city council member voting on that item. Which would not be prohibited now because the official made the payment, did not receive the payment. Does that make sense? Yeah. So the model code does have -- there's a lot of stuff. Basically I just took pictures of it. It does have something in there about conflict of interest involving a client or a substantial customer. And then it defines that in a way that I was not really clear on if that would have applied in the situation or not. So I brought it so that you guys would have it. So from my understanding, if your massage therapist wanted to be on a board, you couldn't appoint them or vote on that because you paid them for their services? That's the understanding that I'm getting from what you're saying. Potentially it would depend on the level of threshold. Okay. Okay. There's another place in this code where it says that it's not a violation if somebody was doing what they've always done. That's kind of so -- Right. Sometimes there are exceptions for if you had like a previous existing relationship. Or it's a small town and there's -- I mean relatively speaking. I don't think that there should be a prohibition about that. Yeah. It's not anywhere else. I don't see the issue with this right now. Any other thoughts? I'm trying to make up scenarios in my mind of where that could potentially be a conflict of interest if somebody -- In this particular instance, the individual was the city council member's main finance advisor or campaign manager. Okay. So the person that was the campaign manager to the city council member then was appointed to a board? Right. And they were being paid for that service by a city council member. Okay. And that was not disclosed prior to the vote for them to be. Were they paid after the fact? I believe it was previous. Okay. I guess the question we're asking is, is that considered some type of -- Should it be prohibited or disclosed, at the very least? I don't think it should be prohibited necessarily, but disclosed possibly depending on the level of how much money was paid to that person. I don't know that. No, I mean not in that case, but I mean if you paid somebody $10,000 for some services and appointed to a board you wanted to have more influence on, I don't know. But it probably doesn't come up very often. But like if they made your kid's birthday cake, that seems a little odd. Yeah. I think it would open up some really weird unintended consequences. It would be another way to make this code even more narrow. We're already there. So no, I don't. In my opinion, no. I want to hear what everybody else thinks. So are we in favor of -- it sounds like we're not in favor of recusal, but might be in favor of disclosure. That seems a little gray still. So how do we feel about disclosure? I think we could discuss disclosure a little bit further, just because I mean when it comes in terms of an ethics, it's always the appearance of bias, correct? And so if there is a -- I mean, but that's where when you're really broad, a birthday cake or a massage probably will not curry favor, whereas if you have a business relationship that incurs thousands of dollars of income from a particular person that may be carrying more, potentially carries more influence, right? And not opposed to disclosure, requiring disclosure. Okay. So I think we have two of us in favor, maybe some language around disclosure. How are you all feeling about that? I just like it's more stuff to -- but I mean, I think that disclosure, I wouldn't -- if someone wanted to disclose that, that'd be fine. But I don't think they should have to. But so I guess no, from me. Thoughts? I think at this point, I would probably, even though I brought it up, to lean more towards no, because I don't see that it's been an issue, a big issue. If it came up as a big issue in the future, then we'd say, oh, we missed something. And then the other point that we touched on a little bit is just based on that research from this previous slide, is there any direction, any consensus to change the thresholds that we currently have? This is for property. Right. So, essentially, currently we have a ownership of 5% or more voting shares or stock in a business entity. That translates to 5% in Austin, 10% -- similar, very similar prohibitions, not the exact same language -- receipt of more than $600 in annual income from a business entity. There's, Austin has 5,000, those percentages ones are if it makes up a certain percentage of someone's annual income. Ownership of more than $600 in the fair market value of a business entity. You can see that those are similar, different threshold levels. And then ownership and real property in the fair market value of more than $600. I definitely would want to raise the real property value because I don't have any idea what a $600 piece of property looks like. I mean, if you're looking at a house or something. Yeah. Would or would not, I'm sorry. I would want to raise that, yeah. I think $5,000 for the property. I think it would make more sense to go to something more like what Austin has, just kind of all across the board. $600 seems really low. I can't really imagine where $600 worth of income would be that influential. Plus income too. I mean, two people drew complaints over that very issue and I think they should have been frivolous because they worked for a university that, you know, the only people who have any decision making about money are the Board of Regents and the President. So I guess maybe with the $5,000 to make it more consistent. Why does Dallas only have $2,500? That's weird. I'd go with the Austin. I like Austin's. Across the board. I'd rate at least two for that. Yes. I can support that. That makes sense. I guess the Dallas doing a 10% of income might make sense to do a percentage rather than a fixed amount. That's a thought. Yep. Yeah, I'm not opposed to that. I think doing a percentage of income could be fair. Just overall, I guess Austin's never is like as a whole, I liked best, but if we wanted to move maybe like income to a percent. Income varies quite widely depending on if you're just, you know, working at Buc-Keys or if you own a big business. Some of them did have a percentage and a value threshold, say whichever is greater or whichever is lower. I didn't have room in this table to do that. I think that makes sense for all categories of percentage, right? Because the percentage of a total is much more meaningful. Plus, it adjusts automatically rather than lagging behind in terms of. Yeah, I like that. We could go with 5 or 10% just across the board. Make up our own. That's what we're here for. Yeah. Okay, so here's what I'm hearing is that we like using the 5,000 as the base number like 5,000 or and then either 5 or 10% for the others. Do we have a number that is standing out to us, 5 or 10? In terms of percentage? I think 10% is reasonable. So I'm hearing 10 for ownership shares stocks, 5,000 for income or 10%. Ownership value, 5,000 or 10%. Real property, 5,000 or 10%. We really need to have some good arguments though. Okay, so just to summarize the consensus that I've heard on all these points, just so that we're clear. For potential changes made to the current financial thresholds, we're changing ownership and shares and stocks to 10%. And then we're changing income and ownership and value and real property and fair market value to 5,000 or 10%, whichever is. That's a great question. Whichever it is. Are you sure that's what you want? No. Are you saying you want the lower number? Whichever is lower. Whichever is. I don't know if that makes sense. No. $5,000 or 10%, whichever is lower, means that if your property is $75,000, then it's. I think it should be whatever is greater. Was I having a percent, it's 5,000, it would likely just always be 5,000. Yeah. So it would be whichever is greater. Okay. Right. Could we just do the percentage and not do the 5,000? Okay, just do away with the dollar amount. I don't like the percentage. I think it's just clean. Because we're living in a time of inflation. Okay, so just 10%. New consensus, 10% across the board. Good. That was the first point. Second point was we wanted to continue to recommend there be a $500 campaign contribution limit for if you add that to the conflict of interest definition per election cycle. Standard election cycle to the best of our knowledge about what that means right now. Yes. And then the second one was there was not consensus to add disclosure or refusal requirements for city official clients if we want to use that term. Correct. I think that's all for this point. Unless anybody has anything else they want to add. Great. So we are concluding at 648 PM. Oh, September meeting needs to be rescheduled for Labor Day. Yes, our September meeting is currently scheduled for the 5th of September, which is Labor Day. Okay. So we need direction on to either try to reschedule it or to just not hold it. Okay. Thoughts about the September meeting? I don't think I need to lie. So what would be the choice since we can't do Labor Day? Reschedule or cancel. Are the options. Oh yeah, some date choices. Is that what we're discussing? I guess that would be. I think if we wanted to reschedule, I would have Tammy reject it. So an option would be just to skip September? Correct. We could just cancel the meeting. Skip September and meet in October and then we don't meet in November and December. Actually, I think our calendar did include a November meeting. I believe since we moved to the beginning of the month, we would meet in November but not December or January. Okay. I move that we skip October. September. September and then meet in October and November. I guess we could meet in December too. We'll move. That's not on the calendar we adopted. Is there a minimum of meetings that have to be held? Yes, but we've met. Okay. So it sounds like there's a motion to cancel the September meeting. Do I need to hold the vote? Do we need to send it to the official meeting? Okay. I'm in the motion and that is seconded. And then all those in favor of canceling the September meeting. None. Okay, September meeting cancelled. Now we will close the meeting at 6.50 p.m. Thank you.