[Milva McDonald]: We are getting started on the Medford Charter Study Committee Ethics Subcommittee meeting on July 1st, 2024. It's just you and me today, Eunice. Our other two members were unable. We might see Maury, but do you want to get things going?
[Eunice Browne]: Um, yeah, I mean, I think this was brought about, um, I had done some, uh. Research, um, as part of, uh, taking a look at article 9 general provisions, um, on what. You know, other charters include, um, looking at maybe 20 or 30 other charters. And this was one particular topic that I unearthed from Framingham's charter, where they have an ethics provision to have both candidates running for office, and then when they're seated, of course, as well as specific department heads like DPW, procurement, finance, and so forth, complete and submit a statement of financial interest. I haven't been able to see yet what their form actually is. If it's the will of this group to pursue this, I will probably give somebody in Framingham a call and see if I can find it. But they did say that in their text that it would be substantially similar to what the state requires. And I looked at that form. Right. And that's pretty intense. Let me see. I'm not good at this sharing stuff. I think I can share it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yes.
[Eunice Browne]: I put it in our drive last night. But that particular form is 42 pages long and it is required of state officials and state and county elected officials. It's very, very comprehensive. Yeah, it sure is. I understand the point of it and I think it certainly belongs as is at the state level. I'm not sure if something quite like that should be used at the local level. But I think where I'm going with all of this after having, and I did some homework yesterday as well, went to about 20 or 30. communities also, most communities don't have anything like this at all. Framingham, of the 20 or 30 that I looked at, and I could have looked at more and ran out of time, Framingham is the only one that I could see that includes any sort of statement of financial interest in their charter. Yeah, it's done via ordinance. I believe Boston. Cambridge, Somerville, and I think Springfield.
[Milva McDonald]: Springfield. I found Springfield.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. OK, then I think that might have been the one that you put in the thing. So I'm like, where'd that come from? And those are all by ordinance. All by ordinance. I think where I'm kind of going with this, because our job is not to write ordinances. It's to put it in the charter. uh, that, and I think what we should do is identify that who, what, and when. So, so the, what being in two parts, what is that there will be a financial statement of financial disclosure completed, um, by whom I think we need to define who, will be required to complete that by when, a certain timeframe from when either taking office or becoming employed. Then the other part of the what is, what is the form going to look like?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I'm just trying to see what they say about the actual form.
[Eunice Browne]: Is this Framingham's?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, this is Framingham's. Yeah. Let me see. So it says, this form is prescribed by the city clerk, and it's similar to the state ethics. D, I think. Yeah. So basically, they give the authority to the city clerk, is what it looks like.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. So I think we need to put something.
[Milva McDonald]: And then the mayor shall propose an ordinance to implement this section of the charter, which is unclear exactly what that means, because they do say who it has to be. They don't actually say, do they say that the clerk is actually reviewing it? They're just issuing receipt verification. And they don't say anything about making it public.
[Eunice Browne]: No. I mean, I was talking to a friend of mine over the weekend who ran for office at one point, and that person said you know that this seems to be sort of the kind of thing that you submit and it doesn't maybe get another look unless somebody raises an issue. you know, somebody comes along and says, seems like this person has some sort of a conflict or, you know, right, your hand in the cookie jar or something like that. And then you go and look at their form. And oh, yeah, lo and behold, you know, they're, you know, they're in bed with the developer or something like that. Um, you know, to me, this is the kind of thing that would be sort of similar to a quarry where. It goes into a repository somewhere and. Only a very small set of eyes gets to look at it. So. Um, yeah, you know, I mean, I've worked in schools. I've been queried a ton of times. So people get to see them.
[Milva McDonald]: Right? This is a little more. Comprehensive, usually a core, you just have to. They just do it on you. You don't I mean, this form is pretty intense.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, that's just it and, you know, kind of looking through this. I, I guess getting back to kind of something that David said. And, you know, I was smelling this over over the weekend. Is the idea of it. Discouraging candidates does concern me. I don't think this should be asked of candidates.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, in a way, I, I mean, I. I think that, well, if it's not going to be public, you're right. Part of the reason for asking for it from candidates is so that, I mean, if we're talking about transparency, which was what was mentioned during the meeting, you would think that these would be available to the public, but that's not necessarily what we're talking about, right? So if they're not going to be available to the public, then I guess candidates don't matter.
[Eunice Browne]: But I think when the elections office prepares their packets for people running for office, if I go in next June and I want to pull papers to run for city council, to my knowledge, and your kid ran, maybe you know a little bit more about this than I do. But I think you get a packet of stuff. You get your nomination papers to fill out. You get your finance. Information and sort of a how to. I would want this included somehow. Either the mention of this, or even a copy of whatever the form is going to look like. With the mention that. You don't need to fill this out now. But if you win a seat, you will be required to complete this within 90 days of being sworn in or something like that. So that if you lose, you run, you lose, no harm, no foul. But if you win a seat, you're going to have to submit this.
[Milva McDonald]: No, I'm just looking at Cambridge's ordinance. I mean, they don't maybe necessarily post the statements, but they do mention public access to the state.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, it could be if you do a FOIA for it. Or of course, if you do a FOIA for something, I've done FOIAs for stuff. And when I get the information, I post it on Facebook. Once somebody does a FOIA, then who knows where that stuff goes.
[Milva McDonald]: And they do require candidates in Cambridge to do it.
[Eunice Browne]: I think Taveed had a good point. To maybe talk to some candidates or some potential candidates and say, maybe show them in the form from the state. And say, yeah, I'm trying to see if we can get the forms that the other communities use and say.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I think that in order to, I mean, we can, the Framingham Charter says that their form will be, you know, that the state form is the model. So that, I think, could be used. But I guess I would be interested in what Cambridge, Boston, and Springfield are using. Cambridge's ordinance is very long. Yeah. You know, and it's very, I should hope that the instructions they're giving to the people who have to fill out the form are a little bit easier to wade through than this ordinance. Assuming they have a form, they just outline in this ordinance what is required to be included in the report.
[Eunice Browne]: I looked on, I think, both Cambridge and Somerville's websites yesterday, and I didn't see any form downloaded or anything. It doesn't mean they didn't have one.
[Milva McDonald]: So they maybe don't have a form because they are very, it's outlined in a very detailed way what has to be reported. So I suppose, you know, if you went through the ordinance one by one and said, okay, identity of equity in a business to which the reported reporting person is associated, which has been transferred. So, I mean, uh, Equity and if you don't have any equity in a business, then okay, skip that one, et cetera. And then they say enforcement, they say the election commission shall determine whether any reporting person has failed to file a statement or has filed a deficient statement. And then the election commission notifies the delinquent if they determine that. And the election commission outlines the penalties for failure to file a correct statement, whatever those are. And a fine, they can get fined not more than $300 a day. That adds up. And the city may commence a civil action to collect the fine. And they report the failure to file to the Attorney General and the VA. And then they talk about the penalties for a false statement of interest and discipline, including suspension, termination, or censure, consistent with any requirements of the state civil service law and city charter and ordinances. Okay. You know, Cambridge's ordinance is pretty comprehensive. I imagine Boston's is as well. Yeah, it's probably a lot like Cambridge's. And then the thing that I found for Springfield was just this whole manual that they had, which talked about, they have a whole ethics commission, right? And then, oh wait, and they say their forms are in here. We could look at Springfield's forms.
[Eunice Browne]: I wonder if we could make a recommendation in the charter or maybe, I don't know, this would have to go back to the full group, but recommend or require Um, or maybe in the final report that the city establish an ethics commission.
[Milva McDonald]: Um, okay, so. You know, by ordinance. So, I feel like we have a couple of things we, we have, um, David suggestion, which I think is a good 1 and we probably should follow up on it too. talk to some people who could potentially be affected by this, elected candidates and employees, department heads or whatever, and see what their thoughts are. I mean, this is purely a transparency issue because the state laws govern the conflict of, oh, here's more. State laws govern conflict of interest. It's not like this would be to find, you know, theoretically that's covered under state law, right? So this would be more, maybe it would reveal some more subtle issues and it would be information for people to look at. So let's say if you want to decide, should I vote for this person? I'm going to look at their financial statement and see if I think they have any conflicts of interest.
[Eunice Browne]: I'd be curious to see, hey Mari, you're on mute. Yeah, yeah. To that end then, I would be curious to see, I was playing around on the state site yesterday, took me a long time to find that form, but you can go in and see who filed a form. So I picked Mr. Donato, for starters. He's probably the one most well-known to us. And I was able to see that he filed his most recently required form, but then you have to go through another hoop to be able to look at it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so I imagine, so it's not like, so if people filed these things, they're not going to be publicly posted, but somebody who really wanted to see them could, there's a way for them to access it.
[Eunice Browne]: Right, now I suppose if I wanted to do a FOIA for Mr. Donato's form, or go through whatever extra hoop is required, I could download that or photocopy it or scan it or take a picture of it or whatever and post it to Kingdom Come if I wanted to.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That was one of the concerns that was mentioned at the meeting is on a certain level, it's pretty intrusive.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. I mean, Devine had a good way of putting it.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, exactly. Like going outside in your underwear.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, I mean, I personally have nothing to hide. I own a home and that's about it. But, you know, somebody did have, you know, a lot of you know, business interests and annuities and equities, and they're asking of the spouse, too.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, because, or some of the forms even mention family, other family members.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, you're, you know, if you have an adult kid at home with you, I don't think anybody would want, you know, that floating around if you have a house on the Cape. What if maybe the house on the Cape is in your spouse's name and not yours because he or she inherited it from her or his parents or something like that?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. It's funny to me. Maury, just to review, the only charter that we could find or that Eunice found, because Eunice is doing the research, is Framingham that actually includes this in the charter. And then the only communities that we could find that have such an ethics reporting requirement were Boston, Cambridge, and Springfield, but they don't put it in the charter. Oh, Somerville has it as well? Yeah. Okay. Is Somerville also by ordinance?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, they're all by ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So they all do it by ordinance and not in the charter. Now, as we've seen, sort of the advantage to ordinances is it can be changed more easily than some would say the advantage to charter is that it can't. And then David also had this, David couldn't come, but he suggested that we talk to some candidates, electives, department heads, or people who maybe could be candidates just to sort of get their sense of how this would affect their, I feel like it's a little bit hard to do that. I mean, it's a good idea, but would you say, yeah, yeah, sure, we should do that? I don't know. It's hard to, you know, I mean, the question that he was, that I think he was saying we would be seeking to answer is, would this discourage people from running for office? That's the question that we would be putting forth.
[Eunice Browne]: I wonder if we could just come up with a quick survey, three, four questions, including either the state form or if we find a form from one of the other communities, that might be a little less intrusive because we would go with the less intrusive angle, I think, and just send it out to the current seated and maybe the former electeds from the last election or two, you know, along with former mayors Burke and McGlynn, and then maybe, you know, I don't know if they would be allowed to reply either, but like the DPW director, building commissioner, you know, a few other people like that, and just say, you know, if you were required to fill out this form, would this discourage you from taking a position or running for office?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we could do that. I guess I just don't feel like it would be the most reliable information.
[Maury Carroll]: I agree fully with that, Nova. I think you're going to get, if you send out nine different requests, you're going to get nine different answers. I kind of like the ordinance idea, but maybe you put it in a charter that an ordinance must be undertaken by the city council, let's say, on some sort of an ethics package, something that might produce something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: One of the things that we did notice is that Springfield has an ethics commission. So you could put it in the charter that an ethics commission would be created by established by ordinance and be somehow put in. I mean, that wouldn't require the ethics commission to institute a reporting requirement. So if that was something that the committee wanted to ensure that that would have to be included too.
[Eunice Browne]: The one thing that I'm thinking about, you know, the ethics commission. I'd be curious to see from Springfield and maybe any other communities that do it who sits on an ethics commission. I mean, if it's, you know, the city council. You know, something that I said, you know, a while back on maybe this topic or another topic, you know, that's the Fox guarding the hen house.
[Milva McDonald]: So this is the. manual of the ethics commission. Let's see what they say. What is the role of the ethics commission?
[Eunice Browne]: Make it a little bit bigger.
[Milva McDonald]: You could say in the charter that it would not include elected officials. City clerk is the main point of contact for this ordinance. What is the purpose of the Ethics Ordinance? The Ethics Ordinance establishes a local ethics commission for Springfield and a standard of conduct for city officials and employees as well as candidates and municipal agents and lobbyists. It also establishes a requirement for the filing of a statement of financial interest. And these supplement the conflict of interest provisions of the state ethics law. So, you know, if this was something that we wanted to put in the charter, we would probably say that an ethics mission shall be established by ordinance that, you know, and maybe use some of this. But as I said, if we didn't specifically say that it would include an ethics reporting requirement, a financial statement, then they wouldn't necessarily do that. Right.
[Eunice Browne]: Can you make that a bit bigger, Melva, please?
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, yeah. Sorry. Down the bottom. Thank you. I'm like, I've done this a million times. How come I can't?
[Maury Carroll]: But don't you think this is just any candidates? You're compounding the paperwork. I mean, as it stands right now, they have X amount of reporting they have to do, which is, you know, seems to go well with the state. Now, if we want to fine-tune it a little bit, fine, but I wouldn't get into, you know, all kinds of red tape here, and that, to me, would discourage people from running.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. So, I mean, did you take a look at the ethics form, Maury?
[Maury Carroll]: No, I haven't had a chance.
[Milva McDonald]: This is, it's 42 pages. Yeah. So this is the form that state, so in Framingham in the charter, they, or they, the Framingham also charter states that there should be an ordinance, right? Yeah. Yeah. And we haven't been able to get their form, but they say that it will be materially similar to the state form. And this is a state form, and it's 42 pages. It's pretty big.
[Maury Carroll]: It's very extensive, and it is time consuming.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I mean, Maury, you're somebody that's owned a business, probably. I don't know about Melva, but I know you've owned businesses over the years. I mean, if you were to run for office, how would you feel about submitting something like that?
[Maury Carroll]: To me, it's no big deal. I mean, you got nothing to hide. I mean, everyone knows what you do. To me, what's the big deal? To me, if I'm running for office, I want to know that I'm going to have the time to run for that position and take it away from my business. But if you can, and you have the time, and you have the desire, I don't think it matters what you have for assets. They're going to find out anyway. There's no hiding any of this stuff anymore. So I recorded in the Secretary of State's office, I recorded in the DOR and taxes and all that stuff. They do all the work for you basically, just look up and see what's going on.
[Eunice Browne]: So it says now here how members of the Ethics Commission are appointed. One is appointed by the mayor, one by the city council, and one by the school committee. So that's 3-3.
[Maury Carroll]: We were proposing on some of our committees on the multi-member boards that everyone has an opportunity to put a candidate or a member onto the committee.
[Milva McDonald]: This doesn't say that I'm elected. Are there any restrictions? Okay. Yeah. You can't be. Yeah. Good. Anyway, I guess the first question is, it seems like we like the ordinance route, but the idea of potentially putting it in the charter with the instruction that it will be administered by ordinance?
[Eunice Browne]: I like the idea of requiring an ethics commission, um, uh, you know, um, and appointed, um, just similar to how Springfield does theirs, you know, maybe adding a couple of other people on there with none of them, being either an elected or an employee of the city. And I think we probably need another meeting in a week or so, so that we all have a chance maybe to look through that, what Springfield has to say. Indicate that, you know, 1 of the duties of the commission would be to establish. A financial disclosure ordinance. And then kind of let them figure it out. Perhaps, because they're going to do the same research that I just did.
[Milva McDonald]: So, what I think would be helpful then is if one of us would call Springfield and maybe talk to one of the ethics commissioners about, because I think they did also refer to an, well, you know, Springfield doesn't have it in their charter, so it's completely by ordinance. So, they were created by ordinance. So, we can't really ask them about the charter, but we can ask them about how it works, you know, I mean, what do you think? Could also call somebody in Framingham.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I was thinking of, you know, trying to touch base with most, if not all of those communities, you know, to get, find out how it's working out for them. Does it encourage, discourage, You know, candidate activity. What form do they actually use? Do they use the state form or have they modified it in some balance on your credit card? You want to make it just fine. Thank you.
[Milva McDonald]: So, would you be willing to do that?
[Eunice Browne]: I can do some of them. Sure. Okay. You know, so.
[Milva McDonald]: Maybe Framingham first since they actually have it in their charter.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. I'm going down. I've made a bunch of notes here.
[Milva McDonald]: With Springfield, the only one that actually has a commission that I could find or that I found actually. Yeah. That makes Framingham and Springfield unique in their own ways.
[Eunice Browne]: So we contact communities to get any forms to find out how it's received by candidates and potential employees.
[Milva McDonald]: OK, that would be awesome, because that will help a lot. And what about talking to people in Medford about how, I mean, it's not just people running for office. It's also people applying for a job, right? Or people like, you know, because this would also cover potentially department heads like this.
[Eunice Browne]: I wonder if a place to start might be our somewhat new HR director with her name's Lisa Crowley. That would actually be a good idea. I think she's worked in other municipalities. Yeah. I don't think she's new to municipal government. If she's not new to municipal government, she probably belongs to trade group, Mass municipal association or whatever trade group is is out there. To see, you know, to get some feedback.
[Milva McDonald]: That's a good idea. Oh, okay. Sorry. I felt like I had to sneeze. So you have a lot on your list already.
[Eunice Browne]: Let me just take a quick glance through here. So the contacting communities to request their form, find out how it impacts candidates and employees. I think my other thought was, you know, if we did a form, you know, to, you know, require it, you know, only after they're elected. And then I think my other, if we did a form, I would maybe think we would modify it. Well, I guess, If we were to do a form, I would want to look and see what the other communities do and then maybe possibly modify it so that it's not quite so intrusive.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. But I don't think the form would be in the charter. I mean, Framingham doesn't have the form in the charter. The charter, we would just have to sort of What we have to figure out what recommendation we're going to make to the whole committee about whether to include any of this. And if so, what and I don't think the form would actually go in the charter.
[Eunice Browne]: No, but they do say that it will be substantially similar to state form. So that, I mean, to me, basically means. you know, just taking that form and crossing out, you know, state of Massachusetts and putting in, you know, community name here.
[Milva McDonald]: But that's an easy thing to say. I mean, if you wanted it to be less, you know, what would you say if you wanted it to be not as comprehensive? It would be harder to phrase that, you know?
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I mean, you want, you know, information about spouses? Do you want your kid's bank account in there or whatever they have in there that's such a deep dive? How much of it?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. All right. Well, let's start by talking. You're going to talk to the communities. I'm wondering if we should ask David if he'll talk to the HR director and maybe some of the other people that he had the idea to talk to.
[Eunice Browne]: Let me see what his email said.
[Milva McDonald]: I think he, yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: David, David, David, David, where are you?
[Milva McDonald]: He said, talk to some politicians and department heads about whether this would greatly affect their decision to run. Well, I think, yeah. And he also thinks leaving implementation to the city council, which would be, you know, having it, um, just say that it would be created by ordinance and it doesn't have to be like, so the ethics commission, I mean, if you want to, if your ethics commission is another layer on what, cause we were just talking about this ethics reporting requirement. So the ethics commission is another layer, right?
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I mean, if you're if we're going to make it as an ordinance, then it goes to city council. Which basically means it's like, I keep saying it's the Fox guarding the house. If you bring it to an ethics commission of residents, then- Well, no, no.
[Maury Carroll]: It only goes to the city council to create the ordinance. To create the ordinance, yeah. The charter can lay out who's elected to it, like we talked about. I think the charter must says that an ordinance Uh, must be established and then that would go to the city council with the parameters of it. And then you move forward and if they have it on there that, you know, elected officials, department heads and all that ineligible to be seated on this commission, then that covers that. You know, it's yeah, I don't think it any harder than it is. You know, it's.
[Milva McDonald]: So I guess what I would be interested in is, I think just going through the Cambridge one, it looks like the clerk, I think it was the clerk that collects the financial statements. You know, the thing about the Ethics Commission is it gives you an appointed body that's kind of responsible for taking care of this as opposed to the city clerk. So, maybe find out when you talk to the municipalities, you know, how are the forms collected? Do you make them available to the public? Who reviews them? What's the feedback been? You know, just things like that, I guess. So I feel like since our scope here was very narrow, it was just to look at whether to institute this financial statement provision. In regard to that, the Ethics Commission would be basically, if we decided to recommend an Ethics Commission, it would be because that would be the body that would kind of be in charge of that. One other thing I'm curious about about the Springfield Ethics Commission is if it's a volunteer commission or if they're stipended. Most, I mean, most of our commissions aren't stipended and the ones that are pretty small. So, but it's something to think about. Oh, yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: And I know that the city council has talked repeatedly about wanting to stipend all of them. You know, if we had a money tree in the backyard.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Right.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. I would love to have been compensated. Anybody should have been compensated.
[Milva McDonald]: No, we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have been compensated in any way, because even if they created an ordinance, we're ad hoc.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: But I was just, yeah, we have that I, I counted all our meetings and all the, because I'm starting to work on the final report and I was like, wow, we've got a lot of meetings.
[Eunice Browne]: Exactly. And not to mention the time that we've all put in, you know, yeah. I think the other. ones that might warrant financial disclosure forms, you know, when you're sort of getting into the realm of any sort of conflicts or possibilities of double dipping or anything like that or favors or anything would be the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Community Development Board.
[Milva McDonald]: Are those people paid? Are those positions that people get hired for?
[Eunice Browne]: No, those are the Community Development Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals. I think they get stipends, but they're a board or a commission just like A bunch of the other ones, but those are that are no, you're right. That's making decisions. You know, that effect, you know, that are in perpetuity. Here in Medford, right?
[Milva McDonald]: At the same time, it's very difficult to. make somebody who's basically doing a volunteer position jump through all those hoops, but which I mean we Beyond like what we did which was You know those trainings the open meeting law and the conflict of interest law.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, I assume they're doing those yeah, I think all the boards are required to do those but I mean right and
[Milva McDonald]: See, and that's the thing is all this stuff, anything that this conflict, that this financial statement would potentially reveal is covered by the conflict of interest law, which theoretically every single person who would be required to fill out that financial statement would have been trained in the conflict of interest law and would have known that it applies to them, right? So this is not, this would be just, We just want the public to, we just want this information to be on file for the public, basically. Because it doesn't have to do with, you know, it's not creating any rules or, I mean, unless the Cambridge or ordinance, the Cambridge ordinance is pretty, pretty long. But I think it's just about reporting. It's not saying, what they can or can't have, that I think is defined in the conflict of interest law, or what they can, you know, what counts as a conflict of interest, what they have to recuse themselves from, et cetera. That's all defined in state law, right? So this would just be, as I think, and as David said, the transparency going out in your underwear, but it would create that. That would be the goal of it. That would be the, that's how I see it anyway.
[Eunice Browne]: You know, I think, you know, the transparency is certainly an important piece, but, you know, to his point, I mean, you're, you know, for transparency, if you were to put this on the city website or whatever, you're basically I mean, I guess the electeds and the department heads and things that have to fill this out, know what they're getting into when they're doing this. So, you know, I guess. And I suppose people in other communities do it too. So, yeah, I mean, certainly we've discovered that some of them do.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I mean, it's not common, right? We found, I mean, and the places that we found that do it are pretty big cities, right? Boston, Cambridge, Springfield, and Somerville. Yeah. Yeah. Right, they're definitely all bigger than us. If we looked at cities of our size, We can see if anybody, I mean, that would be like Maldon.
[Eunice Browne]: I did look at Maldon. Waltham. I could actually tell you the ones that I did look at that didn't seem to have this either via charter or ordinance. Brockton, Chelsea, Gloucester, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lemonster, Ludlow, Maldon, New Bedford, Newburyport, Peabody, Revere, Salem, Shrewsbury, Westfield, and Winthrop. I basically went through everybody that's on MuniCode.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. So, I mean, we know that it's unusual, but it's not unheard of. It's definitely done in some communities. So, I think the plan of talking to these other communities, finding things out about maybe even how long they've been doing it, that's, you know, this might be something that's going to become more common. Who knows? And then what do you guys think if I just ask Naveed if he's willing to talk to the HR director and follow through with his, in whatever way he thinks he should follow through with his suggestion that he made on email?
[Adam Hurtubise]: About putting funds on the agenda?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think he can introduce himself to Lisa Crowley via email if he's not around and maybe suggest that he watch this meeting first. All right.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll ask David to do that. Then the question is, and then we'll reconvene with all that data and material and we'll make a decision about what recommendation we want to make to the whole committee. So is there anything else that we want to do? I mean, maybe what I might do is just ask the Collins Center. Maybe, I mean, what do you think? Do we want to do that? Ask the Collins Center? You know, is this, because a lot of times they'll tell us, you know, it's not common, but newer charters are starting to do that, et cetera.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I mean, I wonder if, I mean, I know they worked with Framingham to do their charter, and they may have worked with Somerville, too, because Somerville's charter is fairly new. I don't know if they worked with the other communities.
[Milva McDonald]: But did Somerville's charter actually get voted on? I thought they submitted their, the charter committee submitted their draft charter, and it was getting bogged down.
[Maury Carroll]: I think it's just sitting there, and they haven't moved on it.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, really? I don't know if it's actually, So, I mean, it's in an ordinance in Somerville anyway. It's not in the charter, but as far as I know, their charter, the committee's product is not, has not been made official. Yeah. So they're still working with their like 1886 or something charter.
[Eunice Browne]: That's how old their charter is. They're worse off than we are. Yeah. So talk to the communities, Framingham, Springfield, Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and ask the questions. Number two.
[Milva McDonald]: I'll ask David to talk to HR director and whoever else he thinks would be helpful. I will ask the Collins Center if they know of any other charters that have it. what their thoughts are, and then we can, is there anything else we should do before we reconvene one more time to make a decision about what recommendation we're going to make?
[Eunice Browne]: The question that we're asking ourselves at this point is, do we want anything involving a statement of financial disclosure, Or do we want to establish an ethics commission? And I'm trying to figure out what. You know, what it is that we're coming back to the group. What it is that we're why we are investigating what we're investigating between now and our next meeting to bring back to the group by August.
[Milva McDonald]: So. Well, we said we would, as I said, we started with a very narrow scope. The Ethics Commission adds another layer to it. But if we believe the Ethics Commission should be created to administrate the financial disclosures, then it's connected. But basically, it's whether we want to mandate financial disclosures in the charter. So that has to be, That question has to be answered first. Do we want to recommend to the committee that we mandate financial disclosures for candidates, electeds, and certain employees or any combination of those?
[Maury Carroll]: And if so- Well, if I'm not mistaken, on their papers that they have to submit with the state, they have to disclose all their financials and so forth. I mean, I don't know. I think our position would be in the charter is to, by ordinance, establish an ethics commission and let the ordinance dictate what the requirements are. If you follow me, am I saying it correctly?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you make sense.
[Maury Carroll]: I don't I don't think we should be here setting up, you know. nine items for everything that the Ethics Commission should be doing. We should just say that one needs to be established, it'll be established through ordinance, which the city council would do that, and figure out, I don't know if we get involved in how many members and who's gonna get there, or would that all be done by the ordinance?
[Milva McDonald]: What do you think? I think that if we decided, so, again, this, So Maury, are you suggesting that we mandate an ethics commission be created by ordinance and then just let the ethics committee? I mean, the ethics commission has to have some sort of charge, like what are they doing? Right? Yeah, I suppose so. And just, so again, going back to this financial disclosures, which is what we, we got sidetracked on that because Springfield actually has an ethics commission to administrate their financial disclosures. So if we put in the charter that there would be an ethics commission would be formed by ordinance, which would, you know, have one person appointed by the mayor, one person by the school committee, one person by the city council, and could not include any current or former, I don't know, elected officials or employees of the city, and then say, and part of the tasks of the ethics commission would be to administrate a financial disclosure requirement. Details of which would be established by ordinance.
[Maury Carroll]: I'd say you're spot on. That's really where we want to go. I understand what you're saying as far as everything else goes. I don't know.
[Eunice Browne]: Maybe I don't know enough about it, but I don't think when a candidate pulls papers for a local office that they have to do any sort of financial disclosure. I think when they, as their campaign donations come in.
[Maury Carroll]: Yes, that's exactly right.
[Eunice Browne]: They have to, and those I don't think get reported to the state. I think if you're running for school, the mayor does.
[Maury Carroll]: No, they all get reported to the state. You have to do a quarterly filing on any kind of what's coming in and what's going out.
[Milva McDonald]: And that's just for campaign finance.
[Maury Carroll]: Right, exactly.
[Milva McDonald]: Right, these particular financial disclosures that we're talking about would require them to reveal every business they're invested in. Basically, I hold stocks in this, I own property here. So, and like I said, the state conflict of interest law Guy applies to all of that anyway, and they will have been trained in that. So this would be just so that people could see, right? Because I don't know how effectively the conflict of interest law is enforced.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think some of it may well be sort of the honor system. Right. If you know, if all of this is covered under the conflict of interest, then why is a community like Boston or Somerville, which, you know, has a. ton of people on staff and things, and who probably, you know, is even more aware of state laws because of that than, you know, I mean, our Elections Commission has, what, one and a half persons working for it? And, you know, is usually drowning in the amount of work that there is. If communities that are bigger and more robustly staffed than us are requiring these things, then something tells me that there's a good reason for it.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, what I'm saying is that the law that has to be followed is the conflict of interest law. The requirement is just to disclose their finances. I mean, I had to look more carefully at the ordinance, but it doesn't say this is legal, this is not legal. It's really about transparency, right? And that's what we discussed at the meeting. This is about transparency and about people seeing. Because some things might not even fall under the conflict of interest law, but somebody might not like that. Oh, wait a minute, look at that city councilor has stock in this, even if it's an indirect relationship, you know, I don't, I mean, you know, it's, as I understand it, this is a matter of transparency.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I guess I, I'm, I'm interested in, um, you know, seeing if we can do a deeper dive into mass general law. I tried to do a little bit of poking around yesterday and my eyes started to glaze over. It's pretty hard to follow this stuff. So I think maybe that's worth some information from the Collins Center.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I don't know. I don't know how much that applies to us really because we can't change state law. I mean, even if you look at the Cambridge Ordinance, all the enforcement is about enforcing the ordinance, and it's about the reporting requirement, right? It's not saying anything about what conflict a person can or can't have, because that's all in state law. So what we would be doing is we would be just laying out this reporting requirement and everybody would have to divulge. I could be understanding it wrong, but that's how I understand it. Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, I still like the idea. You know, of requiring the reporting requirement, whether that be. Um, via the charter, like framing him does they do it via the charter and an ordinance both the language of the charter and the language of the ordinance are. Copy paste, you know, whether we do it that way, or whether we do it via. Establishing an ethics commission, which I think is a pretty darn good idea. You know, provided that it's, you know. Populated by residents. And requiring of them to making 1 of their requirements to do. You know, financial disclosures because I think it's still important to have something. You know, from. People that run for people that are seated in office, at the very least, along with some of the important department heads, and maybe the ZBA and the community development board as well to have. You know, some have. disclosures on file, maybe not on the website for 60,000 people to see, but that if somebody were that interested, they could go hunt it down.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Do we know of any communities that require basically volunteers to file a financial statement? That would be something else. Because that would be, again, You know, that's a lot to ask of a volunteer. But it would be interesting to see if any communities do it. All right, so it looks like we have a plan. Eunice is going to research what the other communities that have this in place. I mean, the other thing I would be interested in knowing from these communities is because the other thing I feel like we have to consider is what whether, I mean, creating the ethics commission takes the burden off the city clerk and the elections department, say, right? But we have to think about, but it still creates a burden to create the commission and all that. So what, you know, what are, what's the burden that we would be putting on the city to administer such a requirement? That's something else to consider. So if you can find out, you know, how they, how that works too, that would be good. Then I'm going to ask David if he's willing to talk to the HR director and potentially carry through the idea that he had about talking to other people. Then I will ask the call-in center and then we'll reconvene and decide if we want to make this recommendation to the whole committee, and if so, how? The other thing I could do is draft a couple of options that we can look at that we didn't put in the charter, which would include creating an ordinance. Because I think either way, no matter what we put in the charter, there has to be some ordinance to get into the details of it.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Okay. You think it might be a good idea maybe for you to. Touch base with, you know, maybe, um, yeah, you know, Mark's some of the, you know, some of the former elected and see what they think of something like this.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, why don't we put together just a little tick list for me to go over with them and so forth. My problem is my time is shrinking. I just don't have a lot of time anymore. And we've been going at this for a year and a half, and I'm willing to do whatever I can. But sure, I can take time out. In fact, I'm going to see most of them this week.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be great. And basically, you could just say, what would you think about the idea of requiring financial statements from?
[Maury Carroll]: Can I tell you the answer already?
[Milva McDonald]: I know. Well, and Donato does it for the state, right?
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, he does it. Yeah, Paul does it.
[Milva McDonald]: So he will know what you mean.
[Maury Carroll]: Oh, yeah, and the other ones will too, but they'll just say to me, you know, this whole thing you're doing is crazy, you know, because everyone is against what we're doing. So, yes, I'd be happy to.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, that's great. All right, so that sounds like a plan. Now, in terms of another meeting, it would be, I mean, let's see. Should we just look at next week at the same time?
[Eunice Browne]: I think Thursday's a holiday. If I'm going to be trying to reach out to some of these city folks. Two weeks? You're not going to find anybody available.
[Maury Carroll]: These are the two biggest vacation weeks of the year. I think you can get through this week coming up and maybe the following, maybe look at the 15th.
[Milva McDonald]: Or the 15th or the 22nd?
[Maury Carroll]: Either one. Don't we have something already on the 22nd?
[Milva McDonald]: 22nd? I don't think we do. Do we? I, my God.
[Maury Carroll]: I'm like, I think I'm going to be- That date is ringing the bell. I know it's just one and I'm laying in the middle.
[Milva McDonald]: Let's see, do we have anything? The other committee that you guys are doing? The final report committee.
[Maury Carroll]: That's the 22nd, I believe.
[Milva McDonald]: Is that the 22nd? I saw it on the city calendar for the 15th. That's it, 15th. Yeah. That sounds right. Yeah, because I'm going to be coming back to town on the 22nd. So I would have a hard time meeting on the morning of the 22nd. But I could do the evening.
[Eunice Browne]: I think I'm around most of this month. I'll probably be gone some of next month.
[Maury Carroll]: I could do some early evening, like 6 o'clock or 6.30, something like that.
[Milva McDonald]: Was there another day of the week that was possible?
[Maury Carroll]: The rest of the week's days, I'm working every day. Monday is my day off. Other than that, I'm in there at 8 in the morning. Who knows?
[Milva McDonald]: We could look at the 15th if I could remember what the heck time I set that other meeting for. What about the 15th? Do you think that's too soon?
[Maury Carroll]: You know, I'm going to, you know. Why don't we do this? Let's schedule it for the 15th. Let's see how much we can get done between now and if we are not able to, you know, do our stuff, then we'll just push it out.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay.
[Maury Carroll]: Is that okay? Is that agreeable?
[Milva McDonald]: And whatever we scheduled for the other committee wouldn't have been in the morning, so.
[Maury Carroll]: No, no. I think that's a nighttime. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's like in the afternoon.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, that's right. It is.
[Milva McDonald]: So let's go to July 15th, 10 AM.
[Maury Carroll]: Okay.
[Milva McDonald]: I won't post it until like, you know, three or four days before. And if it turns out, you know what, we're not going to be able to do that. We just won't, we'll just cancel.
[Eunice Browne]: It's going to take me, you know, if not today, then probably another day to kind of get my head around what I need to, ask these people and put it in some sort of a form so that I can make a call or see if I can get through to anybody, see if I can do a Zoom with any of these people or a phone call. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: It is going to be hard because it's a hard time of year. Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, by noon on Wednesday, you're not going to see anybody in city government except for one person in each office until the following Monday at least. Maybe. Maybe.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it seems like- Maybe one person. It seems like the ordinances and the charter will tell you, like in Springfield, obviously, you could try to contact an ethics commissioner. There are three of them, right? And then in Framingham, was it the city clerk that would get the statement so that person might be good to contact in Framingham? And then I think in Cambridge, they said it was the elections, right?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I need to sit down, you know, I only sort of yeah, but I would target those people. Yeah, you know, so I need to really sit down and absorb them first. And then, you know, take my list of questions that we've talked about, maybe anything else that I can think of and put it in a form so that I'm, you know, each group that I talked to, I'm kind of comparing apples to apples and asking,
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, but I don't think it's three hours of conversation with each municipality. We have some ballpoint questions.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I mean, I think 20 minutes per person is probably it. Maybe half an hour if they want to talk. But like we just said, by noon on Wednesday, you're not going to see a city official, the police chief, the fire chief, and one other. And that's about it.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay, so let's plan for the 15th. I'll send out minutes that list everything that everybody said they would do. I'll get those out within a day.
[Eunice Browne]: OK, yeah, no hurry. I've got some notes here of what I can do, and I'm going to read through all of this stuff over the next day or so, and maybe not start contacting anybody till next week. Great. Sounds good. All right. And we're done 15 minutes early. How's that? Awesome. Thanks, everybody. All right.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks a lot. Have a good one. Have a good fourth. Everybody, yeah, you too. Bye. Bye.
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