Friday, February 01, 2008

CT ethics reforms

Governor Rell has announced an ethics reform proposal (MRJ, by Amanda Falcone).

Rell is looking to address the issue of state pensions for state employees and public officials who are convicted of, plead guilty to or plead no contest to any crime related to their office.

I suggested eliminating pensions for these people at a Council meeting... probably last summer. So this sounds good to me. I'm sick of living in Corrupticut. I'd also suggest providing State Attorney's the power to issue subpoenas.

The story continues:

In addition, she is hoping to strengthen the state's Freedom of Information laws, and she wants to require all cities and towns to adopt a local code of ethics by 2010.

Our "conflict of interest" rules already cover "financial interests" for one's "family."

Is that sufficient? Or should the town revamp its ethics / conflict-of-interest rules? If so, do you have any suggestions?

Tim White
Town Council, 4th District

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

At a previous Council meeting, Town officials were asked what conflicts of interest they might have. Could you list the responses of all parties involved?

Anonymous said...

Suggestions:

Prohibit candidates from willfully lying about their professional credentials when running for council (Mike Ecke is NOT really a CPA), and

Find out if Matt Alieri or someone in his family would benefit from turf going into the HS fields.

Anonymous said...

I don't recall Council members discussing their conflicts, though the TM did.

I work at one of the Town's big vendors (Peoples). So I always avoid anything that directly relates to them.

Anonymous said...

It's sad that government employees have much better benefits then those in the private sector, no matter if the economy is up or down. Lets hope the lawmakers will get rid of some of these benefits that we as tax payers are paying for while we struggle to pay our electric bills.

Anonymous said...

I believe a few changes need to be made for local politics in the area of conflict of interest. Start with the Board of Education; if you worked in education you should be allowed to run for election to the Board. More so if you were a teacher, you cannot distant yourself from contract negotiations and keep an open mind about salary issues. For the Town Council; if you work in education you should recuse yourself from voting on the BOE budget and all issues both operational and capital dollars. If your spouse works for the Town or BOE the same should apply. We have had and still many elected people that have conflict of interest issues. In fairness Mike Ecke recuses himself from the vote on the Police budget.

Anonymous said...

if you worked in education you should be allowed to run for election to the Board.

did you mean "should not be allowed?"

And yes, to his credit, Mike always recuses himself from the police budget vote.

Anonymous said...

And Ecke should recuse himself for any vote regarding the turf field.

Anonymous said...

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I meant to say should not be allowed to run for election to the Board of Ed.

Anonymous said...

7:56 AM

I believe MS Word would refer to your very long sentence as a "fragment" and Miss Podgwaite would give your effort an incomplete. There is a nice amount of interesting words but I can't make out what you are trying to say. Webster works for me and perhaps that was your intent.