By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
Of the more than six dozen individuals who are required this year by city ordinance to submit completed financial-interests forms, eight had not so by Monday, according to a list distributed to the Glasgow Code of Ethics Committee at its meeting.
The city clerk, currently Danielle Cashion, is responsible for distributing the forms and serving as the custodian for them once they are submitted. The ethics committee meets annually to review the forms to ensure they are submitted and signed. The forms are meant as a way for city officials and candidates for city office to disclose any financial matters that could create conflicts of interest for them in their work.
Those who are supposed to complete them include the mayor and all council members; all candidates for those elected positions (in election years for those offices, which this is not); community members who are appointed to serve as city representatives on various boards and committees, such as the economic authority, airport board, code enforcement board, electric plant board, water and sewer commission, etc.; and city employees who are department heads or are in certain administrative roles, like city clerk, city administrator, city treasurer, finance officer, tax administrator, human resources manager, etc.
The forms are mailed or hand-delivered to individuals already in their positions annually in January, and they are due by April 15. By mid-May last year, seven had not submitted their forms. Cashion provided the two of three members present Monday with the stack of forms that had been received, and Rossie Kingery, committee chair, and Ben Rogers divided them among themselves, looking through them to make sure they were signed. The clerk also distributed a page with the list of the names of the eight individuals from whom the documents had not been received. They were Sam Chambers, Scott Owens, David Daughdrill, Jonathan Belcher, who died April 3, Thomas Grubbs, Glenn Pritchard, Troy Stephens and Debbie Livingston.
Rogers suggested in the form of a motion to authorize the city clerk to send certified letters to those whose forms were missing with a deadline, and Kingery agreed. Later, Rogers asked about what that deadline should be, and Cashion, who just started in the city clerk position earlier this year, said she believed that 30 days was the time frame that had been previously used. She emphasized this would just be a reminder letter, with no penalty imposed; only if the forms are still not received after the stated deadline could any penalty be imposed. She said she would inform the panel members once they’d been mailed, and she expected that would be by the end of this week.
Cashion also pointed out that because of the transition from one clerk to another as February ended, it’s possible that forms had been received but that receipt not documented, so she planned to include wording in the letter to ask those individuals to let her know if they had previously provided the financial statements.
“That whole change was going on in the middle of all this,” she said.
Mayor Henry Royse, who is not part of the committee but attended the meeting, said that if the forms were distributed via email, they knew at least a couple of the addresses on that list were incorrect, because Rogers and Kingery had not received their agendas.
Also, during the meeting, Kingery and the Rev. Michael Rice, the latter of whom was absent, were re-elected as chair and secretary for the panel, respectively.
Further, Cashion had mentioned that some changes were proposed for the city’s ethics rules, and Rogers asked what they were. Cashion and Royse each pitched in bits of information about the proposed amendments, as Royse looked through an apparent draft of the ordinance containing them, the first reading of which was scheduled for Monday evening’s council meeting.
The biggest proposed changes are in the definition of family members and the listing of who is required to submit financial statements, the clerk said.
“People were getting them that should never have been getting these financial statements, because the language was being interpreted incorrectly,” Cashion said.
“There’s a lot of, like, meticulous interpretation,” Royse said.
“So we have narrowed that down to – you will not be seeing a stack like this next year. It’ll be a lot smaller,” the city clerk said.
She said the determination and narrowing of the list was made after a review with the Kentucky League of Cities, which happens every four years.
Approval of two readings is required before any city ordinance becomes the local law, and Cashion said that after that occurs, KLC personnel will provide a training session that will also involve this committee, department heads and others.
Items within the financial statement related to how property values are reported and the dollar amount for political contributions are also among the proposed amendments, as well as the timing of when this committee meets. The ordinance has said it is to meet the first Thursday after April 15, but that timing consistently conflicts with when the clerk and/or other city officials are attending trainings.
Comments