Last night the County Ethics committee voted to recommend to the full County Commission to submit changes for approval to the State Ethics Committee that will roll back our local Ethics Committee duties to more closely match the orginal Legislative intent.

It seems when our County Commission adopted the ethics policy they followed and added to a "model" policy written by CTAS (County Technical Advisory Service). Evidently this model policy went far beyond what the State Legislature intended.

Thus, if the revisions to the ethics policy are adopted by the full commission and then approved by the State committee (very likely), the County Ethics Committee will be tasked with only two functions. Briefly, they will be handling ethics complaints regarding:

Gifts to county officials and disclosure of gifts when such gifts might affect decision-making.

Conflicts of interest and disclosure of conflicts of interest that might affect decision-making.

The Ethics Committee members unanimously agreed that the CTAS model ethics policy went too far and that the pared down mission would accomplish two important goals:

Get the Ethics Committee out of spectacles as recently witnessed in the County Tax Assessors race.

Get the Ethics Committee out of situations in which they had no business in the first place.

While one may wonder if a full-blown Ethics Committee with citizen membership might be a good thing, the steps take last night were positive.

To paraphrase the words of one committee member and summarize the feelings of all members, "We are not experts on State Ethics laws. We are not lawyers, and this is not a court. We have no business being subjected to and subjecting others to the mess we have just been through...."

All agreed that under the new policy there would be no need to require sworn ethics complaints.

Interestingly it was pointed out that to date not one ethics complaint fell within the original legislative intent. Thus, had CTAS not over-reached with its model policy, our Ethics Committee would still be waiting to hold its first meeting.

As proof that the members of the Ethics Committee are not trying to limit or short-ciruit citizen's complaints, they took another step that will help citizens find the right venue and place to file complaints that do not fall under the revised scope of the committee.

The committee will list those venues on their ethics complaint forms. This would help citizens' properly file complaints that deal with matters other than gifts and conflicts of interest.

Anytime officials take steps to clear up confusion, save money, and voluntarily limit their own power it is a win for the people.