Ethics committee clears Ward in complaint finding
Polk County’s ethics committee are back with findings from complaints and rebuttals filed in previous weeks by commissioners with Jason Ward cleared by the threemember panel.
Committee chair John Ragland along with members Travis Ragsdale and Ron Ray presented their findings in a short meeting, simply signing documents and handing off copies to be presented to commissioners following the meeting’s close.
The five- page findings addressed four specific questions on whether Ward in his role as commissioner violated ethical guidelines within the county code based on votes he took on the budget in June and comments he made to the Standard Journal and other commissioners.
All four of the questions came back with answers of “no,” but provided their reasoning for the decisions on the questions.
Commissioners Jennifer Hulsey, Ray Barber and Scotty Tillery sought to have questions answered over whether, based on county code governing administration, if Ward was allowed to vote on the budget since as a former candidate for assistant county manager he would have been able to control his own salary if approved by the board later for the job.
The ethics committee decided that based on County Attorney Brad McFall’s previous guidance, and that of Kelly Pridgen, legal counsel from the Association of County
Commissioners of the State of Georiga, that he was allowed to vote.
“We further find the absence of ethics violation all the more evident in view of the fact that all commissioners, including Mr. Ward, understood he lacked a majority support of the Board of Commissioners to hire him for the posisiton that was the subject of elimination,” the findings read.
Questions over whether Ward violated executive session privilege, and his comments to the Standard Journal and other commissioners during open meetings, were also allowed.
However, the committee did say that the question over revealing information from executive session could be a matter which the county commission could undertake on their own, voting to decide that Ward will not be included in the sessions anymore by majority vote.
The committee’s findings also pointed toward Ward’s right to free speech in any comments he gave in previous coverage over the issue of his potential hire as assistant county manager and on the budget.
With the findings presented to the board following the close of the short ethics committee meeting on Friday, the matter comes to a close since no issues was considered a violation.
Ward said following he always felt the complaint “baseless” after the county attorney and the ACCG’s legal counsel both had given their go-ahead for the vote.
“I knew that when I took the vote, I would be attacked for it,” Ward said. “I voted what I felt was the best thing for the county, which was to continue to have an assistant county manager even though I knew it wasn’t going to be me.”
He added he felt that it was time to move on from the complaint and approve a budget.
Barber, Hulsey and Tillery gave their thoughts to the ruling in a two-page press release they sent to the Standard Journal and released on Facebook the next day.
They felt the process should have been more inclusive, and pointed out that at no time did the committee ask for their comments, and they weren’t notified by the county the committee was meeting when they first took in the complaint.
“We realize that the Polk Ethics Committee has the right to not have a hearing,” the statement said. “However, with the issues being discussed, we were hopeful that this committee would see that having a full discussion with all complainants was necessary to have a complete finding.”
Commissioners used the release to present more details as to Ward’s actions prior to and during his candidacy for the assistant county manager position as an explanation for why they took their concerns to the ethics committee with the complaint.
The release provided explanations of conversations dating back to December 2015 between Ward, Tillery and County Manager Matt Denton for the job of assistant county manager, well before other board members were notified in April 2016 that Ward was seeking the job and only after he’d filed an application, according to the release.
It also offered up that the board wasn’t notified of any changes in salary until June prior to a called meeting to approve the budget at the end of the month after two previous budget work sessions in May.
However, they admit the fight over the ethics complaint is now at an end, and that their efforts will be better focused on using the money from the still open position to institute pay raises.
“We think it is time to lay to rest the controversy that has fallen upon Polk County over the hiring of an Assistant County Manager,” the release stated. “An action by an elected official is unethical when a person of reasonable judgment would consider the action as undermining the faith of the citizens in his or her government. In our opin- ion, using one’s position as an elected official to leverage an appointment to a full time paid position falls in that category.”
The committee did ask for better guidelines for any future complaints that come up.
Denton said that more clarification is needed in the county code governing how the ethics committee conducts their business.
“We don’t ever anticipate an ethics complaint,” Denton said. “So the ethics ordinance was drafted sometime around, I believe, in 2003. It just basically said that there will be an ethics committee setup this way, and your duties are this, but it doesn’t say how you’ll conduct your meeting or what to do with your findings.”
Ragland said the committee’s only concern was to ensure the process was transparent before their meeting closed on July 29, with Ray adding “we just want to be sure we’re doing everything ethically as the ethics committee.”