[Milva McDonald]: Welcome everyone to the July 15th, 2024 meeting of the Medford Charter Study Ethics Subcommittee. I haven't heard from David. Hopefully he'll join us. If not, we'll just move ahead. Great. Eunice, do you want to lead? Uh, sure. Um, so I've spent, uh, wait 1st, can we just accept the minutes from the last meeting? Oh, yeah. Um, motion to approve. I 2nd all in favor. Hi, thanks. Great. Now, I can, I can send them in and have them posted. Okay. Go ahead units.
[Eunice Browne]: So I have spent the last couple of weeks since we last met looking at the charters and ordinances of a few other communities in no particular order, Cambridge, Framingham, Boston, Springfield, and Somerville, I think. As we learned early on, Framingham is the only one that has something actually in its charter. All the others have something about ethics or financial filings in their ordinances. I reached out to Framingham, Cambridge, and Springfield. And thought I was going to be able to get in touch with somebody from Cambridge. I did do back and forth with a few people, but they misunderstood what I was asking. And by the time we finally figured out who I really needed to contact, and I reached out, I didn't hear back. Nor did I hear back from anyone from Springfield. I did have a great discussion with a gentleman from Framingham, George King. He's an at-large city councilor and served on their uh first um charter commission uh uh charter commission uh framingham just recently became a city after having been a town forever um and when they were a town they didn't have a charter which i thought was odd um thought everybody had a charter but um needless to say so when they became a city, they established a charter that was in 2017-ish. It's actually undergoing a review now. We're recommending establishing the charter, five-year review, and then every 10. So they're doing their first review right now. I had a great discussion with him. I put all of my notes in our drive and basically, The upshot was that they put it in the charter. He says it was well-intentioned to have something in the charter. However, the execution has not been as effective. They use the state form, which he says, You know, it looks very intrusive and it is, but it doesn't really kind of get to the heart of what was sort of the spirit of what they were trying to get at, which was to ensure that everything's on the up and up in Framingham. It doesn't really get to any potential shadiness or corruption or anything that could be going on. He thinks that a different form might have been more effective. As they're going through the review process, the current charter commission has submitted their report and he doesn't seem to see any changes in that particular section of the charter, which he found a bit strange. But as far as how it operates, all candidates, all electeds fill out a statement of financial disclosure. Let's see. Boards and commissions are not required. Full and part-time city employees, superintendent, chief financial officer, department heads, basically. He hasn't heard anybody say that it's discouraged anybody from running or applying for a job or anything like that. As I said, they use state form. City clerk administers it all. He hasn't heard anything about it being a burden for the clerk, but the clerk would probably say that it does. And as far as transparency, which is a big thing that we were looking at was. The financial disclosure forms are not online, but anybody can go into the office and take a look. It doesn't require a FOIA or anything like that. It's just go in and ask about it. They're done annually and they get disposed of in accordance to the regular records retention requirements. As I wrote in my notes, as I said, he thinks that it's well-intentioned, but ineffective. If they just recommended doing an ordinance, the city council probably wouldn't have done anything. Recommend is, as we know, just that, doesn't require. Putting it in the charter, he said, gave them the requirement that they must implement something. Then as I said, the state form doesn't have a lot that applies directly to Framingham, so it's not as effective at rooting out any possible corruption or shadiness that can occur on the local level. I didn't get in touch with Cambridge or Springfield, but I did look through all of the info that I could find online. You know, Cambridge has their own form that's only about five or six pages long, and it's specific to Cambridge. So you only have to list things if it has a Cambridge connection. You know, Springfield, I couldn't find their form online at all. There was a link to it, but it went nowhere. you know, kind of as an overview, in terms of transparency, you know, in some cases, the clerk deals with these things, in other cases, the elections commission does. Basically, if you want to look at one, you go into the office and ask. It seemed that from what Mr. King said, and it's probably true in the other places, that filling these out and having them available is sort of, how do I put it? They only sort of rear their heads if somebody suspects something that's a little bit funny. Otherwise they just sort of, you know, get filed year after year and they just sort of sit there. In some cases, In most cases, it's all candidates and electeds and department heads that are required to complete them. I think it was Somerville, it's once you're elected, not a candidate, as well as department heads and things. In some cases, boards and commissions are required. In most cases, not unless it was a board or commission that had any sort of permitting or regulatory authority. So it wouldn't be required of the garden commission, but it would be required of the ZBA or the licensing commission or community development or something like that. You know, that's that's kind of what I got out of my research. I don't know if it answered all of my questions or what.
[Milva McDonald]: Thanks, Janice. No, that's a lot of information. More you were potentially going to talk to some people, right?
[Maury Carroll]: Yes, I had an opportunity to talk to 3 pharma. City councils both. and one former Planning Mayor, and one former department head of one of the first responders. And they thought what we have on file right now is more than enough for local politics. And their feeling was it would discourage maybe some candidates from running one way or the other.
[Eunice Browne]: So by what's on file, then you mean just what goes to, so candidates you know, anybody that's a candidate or elected files their, you know, campaign donations. And it goes to the city, which in turn goes to OCPF. But department heads and things like that, as far as I can figure out.
[Maury Carroll]: It's slightly a little different for department heads than it is for elected officials or people, or potential candidates for Oh, you know, I'd say council, mayor, school committee, you know, and I believe mayor is different too, but the mayor I spoke to was a plan E mayor. So they, you know, it was kind of like a, you know, they were elected within the body of the council, but they seemed to think it was unnecessary and it possibly would discourage people from running.
[Milva McDonald]: So, and I just, I didn't really talk in depth with the Collins Center about it, but they also felt that it would basically duplicate because state law, this is all, they felt it was covered in state law. Because there is the conflict of interest law that covers everything. I mean, I think what we're talking about gives sort of an extra layer of information available to the public. But I guess, I'm sorry, I'm losing my train of thought. It's too hot. So we have this information that we collected. We only found one charter that, and Framingham just, Does Framingham's charter just, I'm trying to remember if it just says that they have to create an ordinance or if it lays out the details.
[Eunice Browne]: Let's see, I've got it in front of me here. Every candidate for mayor, council, school committee, department heads, I'm sort of paraphrasing here, and any other municipal officers as may from time to time be Designated by ordinance shall file a statement of financial interest for the preceding year. So it looks like they have it laid out there. Yeah, I mean, I think basically what it's. You know, it says framing and ethics reporting requirement and I think, you know, it basically says that if you're. You know, a candidate for office, or you're a department head, or some sort of other designated. City official that a. an ordinance dictates that you have to file one of these statements of financial interest and that they're filed annually and city clerk manages it all. The cliff notes.
[Milva McDonald]: One thing, so we see Framingham is the only one that has it in the charter, then we have Boston, Somerville, and Cambridge, and Springfield. And I think they're all bigger than Medford. I don't know. Let's see. Is Springfield? So that's something else to consider. They're all bigger. Definitely Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. Oh, yeah. Springfield's way bigger. So we also are seeing this in bigger cities. But it still seems like it's an unusual step to take. So we are charged with deciding what to present to the entire committee.
[Eunice Browne]: My feeling, my recommendation, and I think it may differ, is that I would like to see something in the charter. It could go one of two ways. Just simply requiring in a charter that there be that and then we can designate the who part is required annually to fill out a statement of financial interest and submit it to whatever body we decide to, clerk, school, commit, elections, whoever. And then, so it would be requiring the statement of financial interest, and we would need to decide the who, candidates or electeds or both, and who from the paid side, you know, full-time paid side, and who would manage it. And then I think annually is pretty much a given. And just leave it at that and what sort of form, I guess, do they use the state form or. If we didn't use the state form, then. Would we be dictating the form or with the. Whatever, uh. Office that we designate to manage this would then have to. Decide which form to use state form, or they can they can do the research that we've done and. Or alternatively, um. We, and I guess I guess that can be done via. You know, requiring an ordinance that the city council require and. Establish an ordinance that statements of financial. Interest must be done, or we can do it such that. We require the city council to establish an ordinance within a certain period of time that will establish an ethics commission that will, you know, manage a code of conduct and a statement of, and, you know, do the statement of financial interest part. I was looking through, Somerville has an ethics commission as well. It looks like it's basically taken verbatim from Springfield or vice versa. I don't know which one came first. Those could be used as models. You know, as Mr. King said, when I talked to him, you know, and I said earlier that, you know, if you recommend something, it doesn't have to be done, you know, and we could put that recommendation in our final report, but, you know, that could go nowhere. I'm more of the mind that we require something via the charter regarding ethics. I mean, I'm, I prefer, The ethics commission part, because I think it's stronger. But, you know, I'll settle for the statement of financial interest part and I think we need to put into the charter. It's not like we've talked about, it's not our job to invent an ordinance or anything like that. But I think we need to put in the charter the very basics of what we want that will make them beholden to it. If we were to do an ethics commission, then I would want to see that the members cannot be elected officials. You know, I go, I go back to the Fox guiding the hen house again. Um, you know, we can let them decide. We can let the city council decide. I would prefer to put everything in the charter, but that's not what we do. Um, you know, we can let them decide a lot, but I think we need to give some bare bones requirements. Of things that are kind of, at least in my mind, non negotiable. That's where I'm going.
[Maury Carroll]: OK. Maury, what are your thoughts? I like what we originally thought, that just to put something in the charter that the city council, within a certain amount of period, put together an ethics committee or an ethics commission and let them establish the ground rules of what's going on, either to the left or the right with it. I mean, for us to sit here and dictate, I don't think that's what the charter is. I like the fact that we impose, that the charter imposes a stance that some at the commission or committee must be formed. I agree with Eunice, it should not be elected officials or so forth, whether that goes in there or not, I don't know. Because, I mean, there's a lot more to ethics than just finance. Is this committee or commission, if there's an internal problem, Are they within departments or regarding ethics? Is that this commission or committee's role also? You know, I'm not entirely sure where we're going with this. That's a big word, Ethics Commission, and it covers a lot of territory. So, I mean, are we going to kind of micromanage it and say, oh, no, we just want to get finances? I don't think that's fair myself. And I just, you know, I think we need to emphasize that an ordinance, a city council must have an ordinance establishing an ethics commission or committee and let them hash it out on what the rules and regulations and the game and the playing field is for that committee or commission. And then go from there. Don't forget, in five years they can review it too.
[Milva McDonald]: So, I mean, I feel like we have to put some, we have to say something about the purpose of such a commission, because as you say, Maury, it can mean anything.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: So we should at least think about the purpose or, you know, I mean, if we just say that it's an ordinance to form an ethics commission, it doesn't mean they're going to do financial statements, which is what we started with.
[Maury Carroll]: That was our, you know, narrow. Exactly. Exactly. I agree fully. I can't remember. Is it Springfield that requires the city council units to establish an ordinance?
[Milva McDonald]: They have an ordinance.
[Maury Carroll]: The city council formed it and created it, right? The charter charged the city council with doing No, it didn't.
[Milva McDonald]: Establishing the ordinance. Right. So I'm just looking at Springfield. No, no. I think Framingham's the only one that has it in the charter. I think the others are just ordinances, but it's not mentioned in the charter.
[Eunice Browne]: You're correct.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah, you're right. All right. I think something in the charter pertaining to that would, I'd be in favor of that. I don't know about the outlines of how far we want to go with it. What are you suggesting, Milva?
[Milva McDonald]: I'm not suggesting anything. Right now, I'm looking up to see if I can find the, I just want to look at some of the ordinances so we can see.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think they're all. I think I put a lot of stuff in the drive.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, I I don't. I I maybe the Springfield ordinance. Maybe it's in there, maybe. OK, Springfield. OK, I have questions. Yeah, go ahead. Keep talking while I look.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, the ordinance is in there under Springfield.
[Milva McDonald]: Oh, there's Boston ordinance.
[Eunice Browne]: Springfield has its own subfolder.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. Let me just, I'm not going to the subcommittee folder. I'm just looking through stuff. That's my, uh, okay. Springfield ordinates. Okay. The ordinances are relatively detailed.
[Eunice Browne]: There is established a Springfield Ethics Commission composed of three members. Yeah. You got it right there.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. This is the ordinance. I just want to see what they say about the, this just lays out the composition. How it's run, duties and powers. So it looks like, yeah, so this commission creates the forms. Make them available for public. So it looks like they handle, so this way you bypass the city clerk. Things are submitted to the ethics commission. So far from what I'm seeing, it's mostly the financial statements, but they also look at policy-making positions, so that's looking at the positions to decide who to send the form to, maybe.
[Eunice Browne]: Publish rules and regulations to carry out this charter, including rules governing the conduct here under. Prepare and publish forms and statements, reporting,
[Milva McDonald]: It doesn't say really anything they do specifically other than the financial statements. I mean, I'm skimming it. But it looks to me like it's mostly to manage that.
[Eunice Browne]: Do you see anything different, Eunice? Yeah, I'm looking at something else over here on my desktop about the ordinance. 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 a standard of conduct for municipal agents and the lobbyists. They get into a lot of lobby stuff. The provisions of the city ethics ordinance supplement the conflict of interest provisions in the state ethics law. So I think this seems to go over and above state ethics. Provisions are intended to ensure the public's trust and confidence that city officials are not contaminated by personal financial interests. MGL, the state ethics law, governs what public officials and employees may do on the job, what they may do after hours or on the side. Nothing in the state ethics law prohibits the city from establishing and enforcing additional standards of conduct. Rule of Ethics Commission, pretty much everything that you require, you know, we talked about inspects all statements of financial interest, How are members appointed? How long do they serve? Vacancy, commission governed, reporting requirements, staff, to whom does this ordinance apply? You know, you got a great point, Maury, about ethics being more than finance. I'm just trying to think, you know, I mean, the only thing that kind of comes to mind would be, you know, any sort of sexual misconduct would probably, would possibly come under ethics, or maybe that goes, I mean, that's clearly, you know, oh, if it's two sort of consenting adults, it's not necessarily criminal, but it could be ethical. you know, things are escaping me now, but yeah, there were other things besides finance that would come under ethics.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, we have already a provision that if someone's convicted of a felony, they're automatically, well, that's for electeds, they're automatically vacated from their office. Right. So in terms of criminal activity, I feel like, you know, this ethics commission can't really do anything about that.
[Eunice Browne]: No, but what about some sort of relationship where it's an inappropriate balance of power, a manager and a subordinate?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I guess what I'm concerned about is, let's say an ethics commission gets created. I mean, I assume we're talking about appointed volunteers. that have to make these kinds of judgments about people. I don't know. It's, I feel like that's, you know, that's getting into some, you know, I mean, I mean, a financial statement is a financial statement. It's straightforward. You fill out the form. You know, if there's conflicts of interest, there's conflicts of interest or there isn't. If it doesn't fall under the state ethics law, I mean, the state conflict of interest law, then nobody can really do anything about it, but the information is available to the voters, basically. That's how I look at it. But I don't know, I feel like we're getting into, I feel like an ethics commission, I mean, even if we put it in the charter, the city council would be writing the ordinance and they would define the role of the ethics commission, so.
[Eunice Browne]: True, and they're gonna do the same research that we just did.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and again.
[Maury Carroll]: You hope they are.
[Milva McDonald]: What is this ethics, I keep thinking, what is this ethics commission gonna do?
[Maury Carroll]: I agree in that, and I don't think that's our place to come up and define it. I like the recommendation of it in the charter, asking the city council to do it, and let the owners fall on them, and who's going to be responsible. The city of course is going to say, I don't have time to watch this, I don't have enough staff in my office, and they're all going to pass the buck. I don't know, it's just, to me, it's a tough one. I understand where we're going with it. The state seems to cover all of it pretty good. And like I said, what are you gonna have? Someone that's on city time and he's at, someone's doing some work in a personal home, is that an ethics thing? I use the city equipment on private property. There's a boatload of stuff this could be.
[Eunice Browne]: You know, I guess, you know, looking at it and things that I've, you know, heard and talking to a couple of people is. People with some sort of interest in, you know, some of the development that's. You know, in the pipeline here in Medford, so that would be in the financial statements though.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yes.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. That would come up, you know, right. if they're either, I don't know about campaign contributions, but- That's a whole different thing.
[Maury Carroll]: Campaign contributions, they are what they are.
[Milva McDonald]: It can't be- They're reported already on campaign fans.
[Maury Carroll]: It's a limit of what you can do and all that.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah.
[Eunice Browne]: I think it's $500, so it's not an exorbitant amount of money.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, the idea of an ethics commission sounds really good, but I just feel like it's sort of like very amorphous. And I mean, you know, if we go back to what we started with was to discuss whether or not we were going to require these financial statements, I feel like that's... And the reason that we were considering it was transparency. So basically, you would just have financial statements that would be made available to the public if they wanted to see it, and whoever reviews them, whether it's a clerk or an ethics commission, if there's a violation of the State Conflict of Interest Law, they immediately have to report it to the AG. I don't think anybody's going to put a violation of the State Conflict of Interest Law on one of these statements, but... If somebody wants to hide something, they will. Yeah, but, you know, so really, to me, what we go back to, this would be just more information that we'd be making available to the public. I don't know if I feel, like, comfortable saying in the charter that they have to form an ethics commission without really saying what it is or what it's for, unless it's for this specific purpose and that's what it exists for.
[Eunice Browne]: Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does. I mean, we can't tell them to do something without defining a purpose for it. I think the statement of financial interest, as you said, is, you know, pretty cut and dry. This is what you require.
[Milva McDonald]: It's cut and dry, except, so, Framingham put the whole thing in their charter, and that's probably why they use the state form, because What, you know, what are they going to do, create a form and put the form in the charter? You know, so they use, they said use this form because it's available. And then, but that doesn't work so well. For their purpose.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, they put it in, they have the requirement via ordinance. It's.
[Milva McDonald]: So they could have, yeah, so they could have changed it in the ordinance. I thought they had more details in their charter, but. I don't think so. So, you know, I mean, if it was going to just be the clerk, I don't think we could make the clerk create a form. No, no. We don't really know where Cambridge, how they originated their form.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, I'm still hoping and maybe I'll try again, see if I can reach out to a couple of these. people now that we're talking things through a little bit more.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, I think we need to bring something to the committee for August 1st, and let's see where the whole committee is. Because if the committee is going to vote it down, then there's no point in going further.
[Eunice Browne]: But on the other hand, if we had more information, to be persuasive in one way or another.
[Milva McDonald]: You mean more information? Okay. So what other information? I mean, we have to already, we have to consolidate something to bring to the whole committee. So what we can do is we can say we're making a recommendation. I mean, what you just said, Eunice, we can make a recommendation that The charter require that an ordinance be created to, that would, you know, that required, I mean, it's going to sound a little more eloquent than this, but to require annual statements of financial interest. The other option is the Ethics Commission to administer annual statements of financial interest. Requiring that be formed by ordinance. I mean, we don't really have any other options for the charter, right? Because we're not going to put the whole form in the charter and the whole process in the charter.
[Eunice Browne]: No, I think, well, if the only purpose of the ethics commission is to, you know, manage these forms, then.
[Milva McDonald]: That would be just taking it out of the city clerk's hands.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. And that gives, you know, going back to what we said about, okay, so we established an ethics commission. What is this thing supposed to do? And if this, you know, entity is, you know, purpose is to administer the statement of financial interest, then that's great. It gives them a reason to exist. Um, and then they can figure out, um, You know, what what kind of form to to use and, you know, I mean, they'll do the research that we have is more.
[Milva McDonald]: He said, maybe, maybe not. They might use the state form. They might create like, a 1 pager that doesn't really give much information. Who knows what they would do.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I think if, if the ethics commission, if it's left up to, well, it also depends on what they put in the ordinance. Right. And also I think who makes up the commission, if the commission is, you know, citizens, then there might be a bit more effort. To maybe, maybe not, I don't know. You know, I'm thinking that maybe, you know, If the electeds were to come up with the form, they may make it very, very bare bones so as not to discourage candidates and not to have to reveal too much, leaving the possibility for. untoward activity. If you don't have to reveal much, then there's more of a chance you could do something that's not on the up-and-up.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, you're right. And when we say not on the up-and-up, we might not even be talking, I mean, what are we talking about? Because something's not on the up-and-up, you're talking about something illegal, right? Illegal or just, you know, a little hinky. Well, right, because there are maybe certain things that are not illegal and that don't violate the state conflict of interest law, but that some people might say, well, look, he has a financial interest in that. I don't think that's cool. So that's what I keep going back to is that's all we would be doing. But again, the only people that are going to see these are people who go to City Hall to look at them.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, I mean, if somebody feels like, you know, if they've heard wind of somebody doing something that you know, is even bad optics, then, you know, maybe not illegal, maybe not immoral, but just bad optics, then they can go down to, you know, City Hall, pull the form, you know, and blast it all over Facebook for all to see, you know, which is certainly perfectly okay.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, well, I guess what I think is we should just go to the committee on August 1st and, you know, talk a little bit, you know, like five minutes about the research that we did, say that these are the communities that have, that, you know, Framingham has it in their charter. And the only other, the only communities that we found, Avedon, Springfield, Boston, Framingham, and Somerville and Framingham is the only one that has it in their charter. And so if we did consider putting it in our charter, it would be in the form of a requirement that the city council create an ordinance to either create an ethics commission to oversee an annual financial state statement of financial interest or candidates, elected officials, and or department heads, or that they create an ordinance that creates an ethics commission to do that. And then just maybe ask the committee to vote on who would be in favor of that and to find out. And then if they vote in favor of it, then we'll sort of zero in. The Collins Center will be there and they'll be able to, I mean, If we did put it in the chart and we asked them to help us draft it, there's not standard language for it because it's not in charters, but they could probably come up with something. You did say that you talked briefly to them about it and what did they say? Well, we emailed about it and I asked them and they just said they think it would duplicate state law.
[Eunice Browne]: I mean, I, I just kind of go back to and I don't know state well, well enough. So, I guess that's, you know, my fault, but. If I don't know why. 99% of the charters don't have this, maybe because they feel like it duplicates state law. But why is it that a handful of charters do have it? Do they feel like state law is deficient in some way in what they're trying to do? I don't know.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, when you talk to Mr. King, is that his name? Yeah, I didn't. Yeah. So I mean, since it's in bigger cities, like I'm guessing like in Boston or Cambridge, maybe that has something to do with it. There's like, could be more also people are, you know, it's less, I mean, when you look at even Somerville, like the bigger cities, I mean, these are actual, not to say that their elected officials have more power, but they're, you know, they're more high-powered positions. They're pulling big salaries. And there's a lot more commercial development in the cities. So it could be that maybe they feel like the potential for that is greater. I mean, here in Medford, you know, our elected officials they're part-time other than the mayor. They're part-time, they're not pulling a full-time salary. We have had questions about the developments and I feel like that's the biggest. When we look at this issue of financial statements, that's the biggest thing that we're wondering about. If somebody's pushing for development, is there a reason? Maybe they have a family member or something like that. I feel like that's really what we would be trying to get at with this. Although, if you look at the department heads, I don't know, the superintendent, what would be Maybe that the superintendent would have some stops and some testing company or something, you know, that they were pushing. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, we would just be looking at that kind of thing.
[Eunice Browne]: The other 1. You know, not only is it to me, the city. I'm less worried about candidates so far, more about people who are actually sitting, but I'm also actually concerned about some of the boards requiring boards that have regulatory or permitting authority like the ZBA, community development board, licensing commission, liquor licenses, and so forth. I think that that's also a place where some funny stuff could happen.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so you're saying the Ethics Commission, the reports could potentially include more than just, I mean, to me, if you're going to do it for electives, you do it for candidates. I mean, you know, because if, you know, if you're trying to decide who to vote for and this is a potential tool to help decide that, Once they're elected and they fill out their financial interest form, there's not really anything you can do about it.
[Eunice Browne]: Going back to what you're saying, Melva, about how a lot of these communities are bigger than us, I'm looking at the Medford comparables that Collins Center gave us. You know, they have the 2020 population here, you know, now we're sitting smack dab in the middle of 2024. They have a set 58,000 people. I know I think we're more about 60.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, in the 60s.
[Eunice Browne]: So, uh, so we're.
[Milva McDonald]: If we're at 60. That wasn't from the call-in center, by the way. That was something that I created that I pulled from something I found on the Somerville charter. They must have had one of their staff members put that together. I tried to update it as much as I could, but that's where I got it. Okay.
[Eunice Browne]: Well, thank you then. God love you for doing that. But I mean, there's not that many. If we're over 60 now, Right. Well, Somerville's like in the 80s, I think. Somerville is, and again, this is 2020, so they're at 81.
[Milva McDonald]: Cambridge has got to have more people than that. The closest in size is probably Framingham.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, two-ish, maybe they're at 75 by now, who knows?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, so, you know, they're probably the closest to us. But I feel like the others are, you know, pretty much, pretty, you know, significantly bigger. And also, they have more industry and business, you know, going on. I mean, Cambridge has that's why their taxes are so.
[Eunice Browne]: Um, yeah, but, I mean, well, I guess some of the future try to commission can address it. But, I mean, where are we going? We're going larger. We're, you know.
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, we'd have to, I don't know how much more congested we're going to get.
[Eunice Browne]: That's a good question. I mean, if Mystic Avenue comes up with housing, if whatever's happening, I think what was it with the air rights over Wellington where there's some big development that's percolating. There's another 450 units I think going up. On Mystic Valley Parkway down just past Wegmans. There's another 300 units going up on the Fellsway. In another five years, we could be at 70. Yeah, we could. It's true. I don't know if other communities are growing exponentially as well. you know, and it, I don't know where we're going with the biotech stuff and things, you know, but industry coming in, whatever else. So I think, you know, we're changing. So, you know, what we put in the charter should address and, and this charter, you know, first of all, we're not done. And secondly, even when we are done in three months, it could be, you know, a couple of, two, three years before this thing sees the light of day.
[Milva McDonald]: It wouldn't be. Yeah, it would be 2027, I think. Does this have to go on a single ballot or anything? Well, I'm saying with the, no, I take that back, not with the whole charter. I'm talking about the election, like any new charter would affect the election of 2020s. But other things that aren't election related, like the composition of elected bodies might get put in before that.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. So I mean, where are we five years from now? We could be a whole different ballgame.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. That's why we said five years for the first charter review. Right. So Eunice, will you I mean, first of all, how do you feel, how do you all feel about this idea of just taking it to the committee on August 1st and saying. These are our options, which are really only 2, which is to. Put it, you know, just put in. a requirement that an ordinance be written to require annual or you would say annual statements of financial interest would be required, the administration of which will be detailed by ordinance or something like that, or an ethics commission will be created to administer this by ordinance. and just see where that is. I would say if people decide they want an ethics commission, then I would probably want to put a few more details in about it. Are you saying to bring both of those options to the committee? Yeah, because the only other option is not to do it. Right. No. Something has to go in the charter. Well, I mean, that's why we want to bring that to the committee and see, because if the committee votes no, we don't want to put that in the charter, then that's where we are.
[Maury Carroll]: I agree. I would say that we've met, discussed this. These are the two or three different options we have that we want to bring back to the committee. Let's have some discussion on it. Where do you want to go with it?
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and we have enough, I think we've collected enough information that if people have questions we'll have, you know, answers. Yeah. So, and I don't want to take up too much time with it, like I'm thinking I'm going to budget 20 minutes and then maybe we'll only use 30. No, I didn't say that.
[Eunice Browne]: No, that's the way to do it.
[Maury Carroll]: We'll move on.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. God love you, Milva.
[Maury Carroll]: Like I wrote... I'll make a motion for you, Milva, to end the conversation.
[Milva McDonald]: Okay. You always make sure we are all heard. That's an important thing for everybody. Okay. So Eunice, will you do that? You know, just sort of present it to the committee in a nutshell, say. So, you know, you can think about like how, you know, how you want to spend no more than, I mean, actually three minutes doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually a lot of information you can relay in three minutes.
[Eunice Browne]: So can you repeat? I know you're going to put this in the minutes, but. Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Just to sort of say that after research, this is what we discovered, you know, and, and maybe just say what the aim of the, you know, a financial statement would go above and beyond.
[Maury Carroll]: These are the options that we came up with.
[Milva McDonald]: And these are, yeah. And it's just, there are two, there's two possibilities.
[Maury Carroll]: Yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: And then what people would be voting on then is, do we want to put such an ethics requirement in the charter? And then if they say yes, then we can work out VJs.
[Eunice Browne]: So basically- So you got to make your case. Yeah. So basically my presentation, you know, and maybe what I'll do is, oh, I don't know. I know we don't want another meeting, but, um, uh, Of this committee.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, if, if, if it turns out that they want, that they want it, then maybe we could have another meeting.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, but I'm thinking between now and August 1st. Um, Oh, what, what did you think of that you wanted to accomplish? And I mean, trying to. put the, you know, put a presentation in my head and then finally put it down on paper and make sure it's something that we three are, you know, in agreement on.
[Milva McDonald]: I think it's fine. You know, I think what, I don't know. I think it's fine too. I agree. Yeah. Whatever you, whatever you say. Yeah. Because it's the whole committee is going to vote on it anyway. So.
[Eunice Browne]: So basically my presentation to the full group would be basically what I just said to you guys at 10 a.m. when we started out.
[Maury Carroll]: No, no, no. It would include all of our discussion, not just what you all know. You're right.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. Yeah. And just say that the subcommittee just wanted to take, you know, just take the question back to the whole committee that we didn't necessarily we didn't because we didn't vote on it. We're just saying, you know, we think that this is something that the whole committee should look at. And now we're presenting the information.
[Eunice Browne]: So the question, the underlying question is, do we want to put something regarding ethics in the charter?
[Milva McDonald]: Well, do we want to say it that way, or do we want to just focus on the financial state? Well, like Maury said, ethics is a big word. Right. That's what I mean. It's also like it's vague and include anything, right? So that's why I feel like. It would be if, you know. That's why I feel like we should just focus on the thing that we started focusing on.
[Maury Carroll]: If you want to put something in just pertaining to financial disclosure for all candidates and department heads are required to fill out form X, Y, and Z.
[Milva McDonald]: on file, you know, because if, if the committee finances, if the committee says, yeah, we want to do this annual financial statement and we think the ethics commission is the best way to do it. The charter can say something like, um, an ordinance to establish an ethics committee to administer, uh, the, you know, annual statements of financial interest and any such other issues that, you know,
[Eunice Browne]: So, the question is to. The underlying question is, do we want to put something about a statement of financial disclosure in the charter and. That could be done by including in the charter. The requirement to establish an ordinance, the requirement by. Yeah, I mean, I think it would be done that way or the CC to establish an ordinance. I can't spell. Ordinance, which would.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and the administering body would either be the city clerk or an ethics commission created by ordinance. And you said Springfield has an ethics commission. I mean, Somerville, do we know if they handle the forms? They must.
[Eunice Browne]: I think so.
[Milva McDonald]: All right, you know, because we know that in Springfield Ethics Commission does it in Framingham, it's a city clerk.
[Eunice Browne]: Somerville Ethics. Ethics commission composed of five members, two members appointed by mayor, one's a new and the elections commissioner. No member of the commission shall receive compensation. No member shall hold office.
[Milva McDonald]: So then it's part of the election. That's basically part of the election commissioner's job.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. Ethics commission duties. shall prepare and publish rules, forms?
[Milva McDonald]: I mean, honestly, if we did it, I don't think there would really be, I think an ethics commission would almost be required to create a form unless the city council creates a form. Because I think the state form, is onerous and also, as we've heard, it's not really appropriate for this particular, so.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I mean, the Cambridge form that I looked at, I couldn't find any of the other forms online, and that's why I tried to get in touch with Springfield and didn't get anywhere. The odd thing about Springfield is that you cannot find an email for the city clerk. I can't find many emails online. I did find an email in the ethics commission for the clerk. And when I Googled the guy, turns out that he's like, you know, retired years ago. When I Googled City Clerk in Springfield, I found the name of who seems to be serving now, a woman, and then I looked for other e-mails in Springfield and just used the same naming convention.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, municipal websites are notorious for being not. Because to keep up with the technology and redo websites and all that requires time, it requires money. I think a lot of municipal websites just aren't necessarily up to speed. So that might be why.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. So anyhow, so I didn't, I didn't get too far with either of them. So I couldn't, the only form that I could find online was Cambridge and it was only five pages and it was pretty specific that, you know, it's anybody, you know, if you have any financial interests, you know, with anybody doing business with Cambridge. Right.
[Milva McDonald]: You know, and that's, yeah. But I mean, that's what we would be concerned about, but it's also not just with Cambridge, but like with Medford, it's, Um, you know, because some of the developers that were worried about it might not be in Medford, you know, based in Medford.
[Eunice Browne]: No, but they're doing business doing business. And yeah, so that's what with Medford. I mean, so, in other words, you know, if you're working for, you know, whatever, you know. widgets incorporated based in Foxborough that has absolutely nothing to do with Medford. You don't need to report that. But if widgets incorporated has something before a Medford body.
[Milva McDonald]: Does Cambridge's form also include if you have an immediate family member that has an interest in that?
[Adam Hurtubise]: I think it does, yeah.
[Milva McDonald]: Because that would make a difference because otherwise, you know.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. But it's, you know, It's interest is in a different way than the state form is.
[Milva McDonald]: Well, it sounds like it's a little more useful for, because even if you had those state forms on file in the city clerk's office, they're not that easy to go through. It's very long. It's easier to reference a shorter form that's more specific and targeted anyway. It's easier for people to look at it. It's easier. It's better information for residents, which is what we're going for.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. I mean, we want transparency for all. So so the the underlying question is, I'm kind of thinking this too, so I can, you know, talk about something intelligently is, you know, that do we want to put something, you know, in the charter that requires statements of financial disclosure and that would then in order to implement that. then that would require the city council to establish an ordinance that would require that. Then that would be administered either by the clerk or the elections commission, as I think we saw could be done by them too.
[Milva McDonald]: I would less put it with the elections because the elections is about, people already submit their, I mean, let's say you want to say you have a financial interest in a developer. That's not really elections. Is it? No, that's true. I mean, we already have the people submitting their campaign finance reports. And those are readily accessible to people.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I couldn't figure out why the Elections Commission was working with this stuff either. So it would either be the clerk or an ethics commission that would be established Um, also by ordinance.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah. And, you know, we can send think about, like, I mean, we have a lot of material where we're not going to send it people already have the charter that they're reading that and the call and center memo. But if you want to send out a couple of. you know, documents that you ask people to look at beforehand, like maybe the Cambridge form or maybe, you know, even the Springfield Ethics Commission document was pretty long too. But anyway, I'm just saying if you feel like that there's something that people should, you know, that would help people if they looked at it beforehand. just tell me and when I send an email about the mass meeting, I'll include it as an attachment as materials for the meeting. Does that make sense?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah. You're right. I'm reading the final charter and I'm sure Maury is too. Yeah. I've committed to doing an article every couple of days for the next few weeks.
[Milva McDonald]: Yeah, and I'm just anticipating people would be like, well, what's going to be in this form? What are they going to be asked? That kind of thing. So maybe this might be helpful. Not that people are going to have much time to look at it, but they might. So people who are actually curious might.
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, exactly. So then the presentation basically is, do we want to put something in about statement of financial disclosure? uh, that requires the city council to establish an ordinance and then the administration of it would either be via the clerk or the establishment of an ethics commission. And then I think a lot of our discussion, you know, over the last hour has talked about, you know, the ethics commission and what, what would it do? And so, you know, sort of summarizing that, you know,
[Milva McDonald]: Well, for our purposes in the charter, we would basically just say the ethics commission would oversee the financial statements, right? But it would be created by ordinance. So theoretically, the ordinance could say, like I said, if the charter said to administer the annual financial statements and any such other issues, deemed relevant, you know, as instructed by ordinance or something. Then it could be broader if you did it that way. But I feel like we're mostly, for our purposes now, for this committee, we're mostly focusing on the financial statements. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this ethics commission can be formed without the charter, right, you know?
[Eunice Browne]: Yeah, I think, you know, if we want the financial statements, you know, we have to, Anything that we want done has to go in the charter. Otherwise, it's optional for the city council.
[Milva McDonald]: Right. Exactly. We can just recommend it. I think that makes sense. Do you all agree? Yeah. Okay. Eunice, I'll send out minutes and you send me anything that you want the committee to get as materials. before the meeting on the first.
[Eunice Browne]: Right. Yeah, so send it to you a few days before that. Yeah, and I'll send it out to them. So I have about two weeks to play around.
[Milva McDonald]: Sounds good. Sounds good. All right. Do we have to do a formal ending? Motion to adjourn.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I second that.
[Eunice Browne]: All in favor? Aye. You good with everything, Maury? We got another one this afternoon, Nova? Yeah, 2.30. I might pop that one on TV, see what you guys are up to over there.
[Milva McDonald]: It's mostly just business.
[Eunice Browne]: I haven't even started out yet. All right, thanks. All right, thanks a lot, guys.
[Milva McDonald]: Good job.
[Eunice Browne]: Thank you. Bye. Bye.
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