The Hamblen County Mayor had the CTAS (County Technical Assistance Services) Model Ethics Policy on the agenda for County Commission Committee meetings yesterday.
My December 10th post provided information on the Model Policy and a link where the entire policy can be reviewed.
County Attorney Rusty Cantwell suggested that action on the policy be postponed until the January meetings to allow more time for review. The committee agreed to wait and give all commissioners more time to look at the policy instead of taking a vote yesterday.
The Model Policy is a lengthy document. There should be a great deal of discussion and a lot of questions from commissioners and others because the policy will have an impact on commissioners, other elected officials, county employees, and members of county boards and agencies.
State law mandates that a county policy be in place by June 30, 2007.
The adoption of a Hamblen County Ethics Policy could be one of the most important actions that the current county commission undertakes. Here's hoping that there will be lots of questions, answers to those questions, and open and frank discussion about any new ethics policy.
As I have mentioned before, there are numerous conflicts of interest in both city and county government. Because Tennessee's conflict of interest laws are so wide that you can drive a truck through them, the local conflicts may or may not rise to the level of "legal" conflicts.
Despite the weakness of conflict on interest laws, the average person who works for a living easily sees everyday conflicts of interest when he observes elected and appointed officials hiring and supervising their own relatives, voting on budgets and appropriations that affect a spouse or child, serving on inter-related boards and commissions, and collecting two or three checks from the county and county boards and agencies.
There is a great opportunity now for the Hamblen County Commission to rise above partisanship and self-interest and to set the ethics bar at the highest level in Hamblen County.
Hopefully, commissioners will seize this opportunity and adopt a stringent ethics policy with the highest standards.
Wouldn't it be great to see articles across the state noting that Hamblen County adopted the most demanding ethics policy of any county?
If there's any area where it is clearly important to be #1, it would be in the adoption of an ethics policy that exemplifies the highest in governmental integrity and that demands that elected officials and governmental employees avoid even the appearance of impropriety in their actions!
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