Transcript

and get started at seven o'clock.

Thank you guys for being here.

The clerk would go ahead and note his here,

and then I will hand it off to Sarah

to introduce this evening.

So I'm happy to introduce Susan Willockie.

She is the education and communications manager

at the Ohio Ethics Commission,

where she's worked for more than 20 years.

And she also has a podcast with Biweekly Episodes

where she shares her favorite Ethics stories

from around Ohio and the nation.

A podcast.

Pure pressure, pure pressure, right?

Happy to introduce Susan.

I've had the opportunity to be a part of a multiple

presentations that she's done,

and I'm always so grateful.

So thank you for joining us tonight.

Thanks, Sarah.

Well, good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

This is actually a speech I never mind doing

because I lived here.

So I get to go home really close.

It's like I have one,

I have one at 7 o'clock at the night coming up

like in a week or two,

but I'm like in Lake County, Ohio.

So this is how I'll be home at time for dinner.

I mean, I don't think so.

I'm always happy to come to your council meetings.

If I've met you before, it's nice to see you again.

For people I'm meeting for the first time,

Susan Willockie with the Ohio Ethics Commission,

as Sarah said.

And yeah, I've been doing this for a long time.

So we've really tried over the years

to kind of have a lot of outreach and resources

and ways that people can connect,

whether it's one of our fact sheets.

I do live speeches.

We have all kinds of different options for webinars.

I have all kinds of specified customized trainings

for different lines of work.

We do a quarterly newsletter.

If anybody ever wants to subscribe to our newsletter,

get what's going on at the Ethics Commission.

News releases.

And yes, as Sarah said,

our latest venture into the world of communication

has been a podcast.

So if you like True Crime,

just the most popular genre of podcasts.

If you like True Crime,

or if you just like laughing self-righteously

at those who made poor decisions,

join us on our podcast.

We drop every other Tuesday as Sarah said.

So what I thought I would do today

is kind of for those of you that this is a refresher,

we'll kind of give some background basics

in the context of the Ethics Law,

and use stories that we've highlighted on our podcast

just to give you a taste

for some of the different kinds of situations

that we talk about.

But I always like to spend a couple of minutes on the why.

I know I hear the feedback, too.

I keep like back enough.

Like, should I stand in Indiana with that help?

So tell me if it helps if I move back here.

I'll do this too.

How's that just in case that's helpful?

Okay, so the why of the Ethics Law

is often not the reason that I think people think it is.

Now in all fairness,

if you're familiar with this statute,

it was based on a scandal.

No question about lots of states like Ohio,

we're introducing Ethics Laws in 73 and 74

on the heels of what national scandal.

Absolutely.

Absolutely, there's no question.

That's kind of what was the impetus behind.

By the way, it does not matter to me

what your political leanings are.

That's not relevant here.

The idea here is that Watergate was

an unfortunate chapter in American history

because the eyes of the world were upon us

for less than positive reasons.

But I'm a huge believer

that good things could come out of difficult situations.

I truly believe the whole idea of Ethics Laws

actually putting into statute

the things that people in public service,

whether we've been hired, elected, appointed,

folk time, part time management, non-managed union,

non-union doesn't matter.

We're all subject to this criminal law

that says, here are the boundaries

around our public service.

So we know what we can or can't do.

Now, again, I get that people like the big, huge stories.

Sure, we highlight some of the cool ones on the podcast.

Sure, that's what reporters want to talk to me about.

I respect that.

But at the end of the day,

it's not just those huge corruption stories

that to me get to the heart of what this statute's all about, right?

Certainly, I will say, as people in public service,

it definitely behooves us to understand the law well

so we can comply with it.

I've been a state employee now.

I've been with the Ethics Commission

more than 20 years of Sarah said,

but I've been with the state of Ohio almost 35 years now.

One of my life goals is to get through my career

without being convicted of a crime.

I'm doing really well so far, right?

Yeah, 35 years of counting.

So yes, there's always that practical purpose

of why we want to obey the Ethics Law.

More foundationally, though, to me, the why,

why this law is important,

why it protects us, how it does so,

is much more foundational.

Here's the real why of the Ethics Law.

You, forget for a minute, your public role.

I don't care, just think about all the governments

that serve you based on where you live,

your state government, your county, your city,

for those who might live in a township or a village,

even things like the public library,

the public school district, the community college, right?

Come to state, Ohio State,

you absolutely have the right to know

every time one of those governmental entities

or people they're in, they make a decision,

they move forward on a project, they issue a license,

they conduct the investigation, they issue the grant,

they hire people, whatever.

You have the right to know that government action,

decision, or expenditure was based on what served

the public best.

You should never have to wonder in your county.

She did, did mine three county commissioners vote that way

because that was right for the county

or because it financially benefited their private businesses.

You still have the right to expect objectivity

in how governments operate.

So if I've told you the story before,

if those have been with me before, forgive me.

But a number of years ago, I was speaking

at a huge conference at the Convention Center in downtown,

really nice gentleman approached me afterwards

and he said, Susan, good speech and all.

But I feel like you guys at the Ethics Commission

are missing the obvious solution

to the ethics problems we've had in Ohio.

Don't you love when people tell you how you're doing

your job wrong when they've never done your job?

But I'm like, okay, no, how can I be open here?

What can I learn?

And here's what he said to me.

He was completely serious in earnest.

He said, he even used the words simply.

We simply need to get rid of those particular people

in public service who happen to have any personal bias.

So in so keeping with that goal, you're all fired.

But so am I.

So is every human being walking this planet?

If you think there's no room ever in your life or bias,

you've never been asked this question.

Come on, do you honest everybody?

Could you raise your hand

if you happen to have the most beautiful children

or grandchildren in the whole wide world?

Could I see who that person is?

There you go.

There's some honest people in the room, right?

Believe it or not, not all bias is inherently evil, right?

Some is, but I admit if you were to say something

unkind to me about, I don't know, my 91 year old mom,

but my wonderful husband of 28 years,

I'm not going to be open-minded.

I'm going to get biased and subjective pretty quickly.

That doesn't make me an evil human being

who is unfit to have a public roller job.

What it means is there may be situations in my career

that if something before my agency

had a definite direct impact, my husband

and the company he works for is looking for a contract

with my agency.

My mom is seeking advice from the ethics commission.

That just means I would step back.

That simply means there are times in the life

of a public employer official

where recusal comes in to play to protect

the public's best interest in knowing

all government actions happen objectively,

even if people in government can't always be objective

because of our own humanity.

This can be something as simple as a city building person.

No, you can't go do that building inspection

because the building of the business is owned by your sister.

Step back, let's say I'll say it can be that simple.

We've had bigger cases that I've heard of.

I mentioned I'm doing podcast episodes.

There was one out of Indiana,

a state employee was convicted of acting

on a conflict of interest.

Here was her conflict.

Her job with the state was to inspect

inspections of daycare, commercial daycare facilities.

Good job, I'm glad it exists.

I want those little ones to be safe.

Guess though what line of work she and her husband

ran in their private lives.

For commercial daycare facilities.

And guess who was inspecting every one of them?

And shuckingly, they all pass with flying colors

every time, right?

Get my smile on, that's right, kind of thing, right?

Now, here's my question for all of you

that admitted maybe there's some bias in your life

about your baby's rate, okay?

Just a curiosity.

Did anybody find that the second example

the daycare hit you more viscerally

than the building department one, right?

Yeah, are any of you kind of in that category of,

hey, listen, if you mess with me, chances are one day

I'm gonna forgive you and let it go

if only for my mental health.

You don't get to live rent free in my head

for the rest of my life.

But if you mess with my children,

I will hide your body in the trunk of my car

and help the search party look for you.

Who's in that category, right?

You have the right to know when government acts

that it's beyond reproach and it's objectivity.

Now, again, what we want to happens

is that the people come to us

for these reasons besides investigations.

Don't get me wrong.

Our investigators are wonderful.

They do their job well thoroughly, professionally,

even compassionally when it's warranted.

But at the end of the day,

our preference would always be

that we not have to investigate people,

that instead people come to us for guidance,

for advice, for education.

Now, let me just say this.

You can get free legal advice from the ethics cushion.

You can call us, you can reach out to us,

you can check out our website.

We have been issuing advisory opinions

for 52 years now, right?

So we have a pretty big body of press

that already exists.

That is not to dissuade any of you

from reaching out to your law director, right?

I never want it to feel like it has to be either or.

I just want to let you know you have lots of resources.

And Andrew's not going to be offended.

I'm not going to be offended.

He'll say, hey, the more help we get

in doing the right thing, the better off we all are.

So do check out our website.

If you need some guides, if you need advice,

we, again, would rather do that

than ever have to investigate anybody.

Okay, so real quick there in the ethics commission.

Here are the primary areas of the ethics audit.

We'll do a pretty quick run through tonight.

I grant you a session like this one

is kind of like the cliff notes

of the Ohio ethics law.

You know, I've always thought to myself,

I could spend, I could spend a whole semester

in a law school just teaching the ethics.

We could do some cool debates

and all these kind of case studies.

But this is kind of the cliff notes.

It's kind of a brief overview.

Mostly designed to help peak our interest

and maybe get our radar.

Just a little more honed of those moments

in our careers and in our years of public service

where you kind of go, I'm gonna stop

and take a moment here.

I like to joke, this is not true.

So that's why I can joke about it.

I like to joke that I'm going to write a book one day.

No one will buy it because it's like three sentences long, right?

I have my title, the title is First Voice.

Okay, here's my whole book, you guys.

You can sell it and plagiarize it all you want

because it's about three cents.

Okay, here's my, okay, we all have two voices in our head.

The first one says this, huh.

And the second one immediately follows with, eh, it'll be fine.

Anybody want to take a guess

what my last sentence of my book is?

Listen to the First Voice, okay?

When there's a moment of hesitation,

it doesn't mean something's illegal,

someone's done something wrong,

but it means it's a great opportunity

to get more information so you can proceed more confidently.

Knowing, yes, I've checked with the ethics

in our law director and we can move forward.

Okay, so let's kind of hit these one at a time.

You're going to see my whole podcast theme here

throughout channel lectures,

get people to join us online kind of thing.

Conflicts of interest, I've often thought,

this part of the law, I think unnecessarily gets a bad rap.

It sort of inherently has a ominous tone to it.

Kind of like, you know, conflict of interest.

Dun, dun, dun, sort of thing.

The truth is every single one of us in public service

has the potential to find ourselves

in a situation of conflict of interest.

And you know why it's not because people in public service

are bad looking for conflicts.

It's because people in public service are people, right?

We have lives outside our public world.

None of you cease to exist at the end of your board meeting

or at the end of that state or city business day.

We all continue to live.

We have our own lives, our own investments,

our own families, et cetera.

These are all the things that enrich our lives

and give us joy, but they are also the very things

that can bring about a conflict of interest.

Now, in all fairness, there is a saying,

a statement, a clause, if you will,

in quotes there that we use all the time

in our advisory opinions, definite and direct,

because I never want you to think to yourself.

So hang on, I serve on Westerville City Council.

And you know, we're gonna be voting on a budget

that's gonna include, you know, I don't know,

road maintenance kind of thing.

And you know, I do drive on roads in Westerville.

Do I have to accuse myself?

You see how absurd that is, right?

That is vastly different, everybody,

than something true story like this of,

hey, could we send a lot of that budget money

to improving this square city block,

where by the way, my restaurant is located

where we can improve sidewalks and lighting

and parking all that kind of thing,

because it will help my private business.

There's a difference there in the eyes of the ethics law.

I actually grew up, even though I live here,

I've lived here for many years.

I actually grew up in a really rural part of Ohio.

And I remember, I was maybe eight years old.

I did not know what was going on.

I knew it was a big deal though,

that in my little township farms,

we were getting city water.

I had no idea what that meant.

I just knew all the adults were really excited

about getting city water.

I didn't know, we were just been drinking country water

before then I didn't know there was a difference.

So looking back now, as someone in the ethics world,

I now know what was happening.

Apparently, our three township trustees

all got to kind of play some role in determining

the layout of where those water pipes would go first.

I'll bet you can't fathom where they were all fighting

for those pipes to go first.

That's the difference between acting across the board.

In all fairness, some of the ways that we've seen this

is definitely things that can kind of come up organically.

For example, I completely understand why folks

on the city council, it's really possible.

You have jobs in your private life.

Someone's got to pay the mortgage, we get that.

That is a very fair question of,

when do I need to know that moment of, do I recuse?

This is across the board impact versus somehow,

somehow more distinctly or uniquely impacting myself,

my property values, my home, my finances, my family,

or someone that I have a business relationship with

in my private life, your outside job,

your outside consulting, maybe your clients

and your private business, et cetera.

This is where I would say,

this is where getting guidance and advice is helpful.

But in general, just so you know,

we do some pretty good guidance and advice

on some of these areas of the law.

One of my most favorite advice opinions we've ever issued

was back in 2007, it was actually issued

to the village of Athens, Ohio.

Now even if you've never been there,

it's gonna ask you a really hard,

jeopardy question here.

Can anybody tell me who the largest employer is

in the village of Athens, Ohio,

not even a close second?

Of course, so it may just by statistics,

math would tell you it's going to be

that you have village council members

who work for the university.

That's just statistics, that's just math,

God's right there, okay?

So it is understandable that they would come to us

and say, okay, hold on, we have folks who serve

on the village council, their business associates,

the university, that's where they work,

that is their business associate,

when do they need to know, when to step back,

when to actually get involved?

And so I really like it,

because they really did a great job of bifurcating

what that what we mean by across the board,

uniform impact versus more distinct impact.

So for example, could those village council members vote

on things like village taxes, water rates, sewer rates,

sure, because it was impacted everybody the same,

where they had to step away with things like this issue,

it's a permit, it's a land inspection,

it's a building inspection, something that impacts

their employer, their outside life more uniquely.

Just so you know, if you ever do have questions,

concerns, the advise opinions are on our website.

So I think there's even somebody here

that might work for a school district, that's lovely.

It doesn't mean you have to step off,

you can't act on all matters,

it means anytime something is more unique

to that particular place,

that even if it's a public entity,

where I'm employed, that I'm going to recuse

and trust that the collective wisdom of this body

will represent the public well,

even in those moments we have to recuse, okay?

When these issues come up,

please check out our website, call us,

reach out to your law director, et cetera,

because again, we'd rather, we'd always rather

educate advise than do an after the fact.

Just so you know too, following the advice

of the ethics commission can provide you

with legal immunity.

So let's say you would write us a letter,

hey, ethics commission, here's my situation,

what do I need to know, kind of thing.

If we write your letter back saying,

hey, assuming all the facts on your letter are accurate,

here's what we advise you should do to stay

within the confines of the ethics law.

If you then follow the advice

that we've provided to you in writing,

you have that legal immunity,

you cannot be charged with the crime,

not just by us, by anybody,

you cannot be sued in the civil court of law

and you cannot be removed from your public job

or office for following our advice.

You are safe under the ethics offer for following our advice.

Now, here's the huge caveat,

there's always a loophole, isn't there?

I'm telling you, right?

Here's the huge, it's gonna shock you, right?

That binding legal advice that we issue for free

is only good assuming you haven't already committed

the crime before you asked us.

Shocking, right?

Yeah, you'd be surprised how often

would to remind people of that.

I was doing a webinar one day,

it's really common after I do webinar people call me

that we're on the webinar

because they don't want to use the chat function,

ask questions for people.

So I had someone call me from,

she was an elected school board member

from a large school district in Ohio.

I'm gonna leave it at that if it's okay, right?

And any Susan, I want to follow the question,

yeah, so we're talking.

Do you know what I was picking up on

and she was relaying her story to me?

Her verb tense.

You with me?

We debated, we decided, we discussed, we voted.

So I finally kind of cut her off open.

I said, hang on, you've already done

all this stuff that we're talking about.

She said to me, just decide a snippy.

She went like this.

Yes, that's why you need advice.

I'm thinking, you need a lawyer, lady.

You just call me confess, always.

Please keep us in loop, we'd love to help.

All right, so because I kind of a podcast theme going,

when I do my longer, like online things,

I do this whole thing where they get

to choose their own adventure.

But the one I wanted to tell you guys

because I've elected officials.

I have all these cool stories about a puppy

and about a wedding.

This is the one that I actually thought

you would find very intriguing.

This one happened in Maryland.

Don't worry, it wasn't in Ohio.

Everybody breathe a sigh, really.

So there was a county employee who was in the zoning mode.

Apparently in Mayor County and Maryland,

zoning people are county employees.

So he had a county vehicle assigned him

because he was always out in the field, right?

So he decides a good way to earn some extra cash

would be to become an Amazon delivery driver.

You know where this story is going, right?

So yes, county vehicle with big logo

on the passenger and the driver's door.

He wears a jacket with the county logo

and even his badge dangling from his belt loop kind of thing.

And one day, he's on county time in that county vehicle

and delivers a package.

Guess who's inadvertently delivering it to?

A county commissioner who had a ring doorbell.

So the commissioner later is checking his home.

He's like, wait a minute.

Wait a minute, it's not a county, wait, wait, wait, wait.

So there you go, really bad idea.

So it's not just those kind of things of,

yeah, obviously using county or city equipment, et cetera,

but even the influence of our public office.

We have a story of a settlement agreement once

of somebody working for the Department of Mental Health

using letterhead from her agency

trying to advocate for her child getting help

with this other agency.

Things like it, you know, just put a big line

between our private lives and our public responsibilities

and we'll always be in a safer place.

How are we doing so far?

Am I doing, oh my goodness, time flies.

We're talking with the ethics law.

Questions on conflicts.

Anything that I freaked you out about

that you want to talk about while I'm here.

You're like, we're not telling her anything.

We know how this works, okay.

It's all good.

If you want to ever reach out afterwards,

please let me know.

I'm actually gonna skip this one area

of the ethics law quickly

because I wanna talk a little bit

about this area of the ethics law.

So here's the thing about the gift area of the ethics law.

You may be expecting me to say one of two things.

One, you may be thinking I'm about to say,

that's it, you're in public service,

you can accept anything anytime, no place,

no however, not even a stick of gum.

That's actually not accurate.

But the other thing you understandably may assume

that I could tell you is a dollar amount.

Hey, ethics lady, what's the cut off?

Is it 10, 20, 50, 100, a million?

Just tell us and we'll obey it.

The truth is, the statute in Ohio

does not identify a specific dollar amount.

So here's the cut off for gifts.

If the city of Westerville ever has an internal gift policy

or practice that has a very modest dollar amount,

if you tell your folks,

hey, please don't take anything worth more

than 20 bucks from a vendor.

That's certainly fine to give an internal policy

with a dollar amount.

The challenge we have found of other states

have tried it with putting a dollar amount in statute.

It sort of hamstrings the ability

to make common sense decisions

of when to open a full blown criminal investigation.

There was a case one time, who was Pennsylvania?

That for a hot second, they had a $25 gift

on their statute.

Legislature actually amended the statute.

And the ethics question was like, yay, clear cut now.

People know what they can or can't do.

That first year they received an allegation

that a state employee accepted a gift basket

from a vendor valued at $30.

And so it was one of those situations of,

well, they would take care of this case within two days,

finished all the paperwork, closed it,

and a reporter found out about it,

and asked for a list of all the people who had worked on it,

how many hours it took and what all their hourly wages were.

And there was an article in the paper,

something like, well, the state just spent $4,800,

rectifying a $5 crime sort of thing.

So we've not pursued a dollar amount.

What we do have in our statute are these two words,

is this gift, this meal, this ticket,

this golf bottle, this tin of cookies,

this box of popcorn, whatever it is,

is it both substantial and improper?

So I like to break these words down briefly.

I actually like starting with that second word first,

improper, all that word means is who's the source

of the thing of value, right?

Is it a current vendor to the city of Westville?

They're buying, you're buying the things from them.

Is it what I call a wannabe vendor?

They're actively seeking to do business.

They want to sell goods and services,

they're advertising, putting in bids, calling up,

hey, could I talk to you about our widget?

So current or wannabe vendors are improper sources

of certain gifts.

Anybody directly regulated by the city,

the building inspectively does cannot inspect

my new sunroof kind of thing.

So I'm regulated by them.

And the last category, anybody with a specific

or invested interest in matters before the public office.

Let's say that I really want to build my underwater basket

weaving business in the city of Westville,

but I can't until the zoning ward

approves my rezoning request.

So I'm not regulated by them.

I'm not doing business with them.

My company doesn't exist yet in this hypothetical.

But I clearly have a vested interest

in the outcome of a public decision.

So now I too am an improper source.

Again, hear me.

I'm not saying you're citizenry, you're vendors at center.

We're not saying they're all improper people

or that they must all have improper motives.

No, but what the law would say is that those folks

would be improper sources of gifts

that we would call substantial.

In order for the ethics commission to say,

this was illegal, this was an actual crime

that this public employer official accepted

that thing of value.

We have to prove it was both from one of those improper sources.

We just identified and that that thing was substantial

in nature.

Again, barring a dollar amount, how do we do that?

Well, historically and even anecdotally

through our advisory payments, we've always

kind of differentiated between that word substantial.

And then we use the word nominal

or the Latin phrase de minimis, which I always translate

the Latin phrase de minimis into, don't lose it tonnously

over this kind of thing, right?

If your personal pasture, either as an elected official

or as a city employee is, I take nothing.

Nope, I won't even take a bottle of water from a vendor.

If that's where your comfort level is, that's respect.

I will never dissuade you from being more ethical

than what the law says you have to be.

But to be fair, we're not talking about some

of those trinkety kind of things.

For all of us who've been in the public or private sectors,

you know the things that vendors drop off at an office,

like depends on the pencils, and the t-shirts,

and the ball caps, and, you know, nominal,

diminutive hand sanitizers, whatever.

That's not what we're talking about.

Years ago, I did have an issue with a coffee mug,

but this was in 2020 when we all got sent home

and all of my speeches turned into webinars.

And I am not a coffee drinker, but I am a hot tea drinker.

So if you ever do a webinar with me, chances are,

when you're taking the quizzes and polls,

I'm pounding hot tea first thing in the morning.

So one day I had done a webinar and a lady wrote to me

and said, oh, I really enjoyed that.

And she said, please don't ever lose

that wicked sense of humor.

Your coffee cup cracked me up.

I was like, my coffee cup, and I'm looking around my desk

at home.

Do you know what mug?

I had randomly grabbed out of my kitchen cabinet

two minutes for going live on a webinar.

It's a big white mug with bright purple letters on the front.

And the bright purple letters read

this might be wine.

That's what the ethics lady was drinking out

of at nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning on a live webcam

talking about the ethics.

So not every gift is illegal.

Maybe just a bad idea now and again, right?

When we talk about these things, though,

that you've probably heard stories over the years

of substantial things.

Everything from, you know, gosh, I've heard money.

I've heard gift cards, travel expenses, jewelry, appliances,

furniture, home remodeling, lumber.

I had a, I had a, I was speaking at a city building

officials conference last summer.

And a city building inspector from another part of Ohio

came up to me and told me I was making a mountain out

of a molehill with this law.

And he said when he goes to sites to do inspections,

he frequently asks them if they have any leftover lumber,

he can take off their hands for them.

If any of you have priced lumber in the last couple of years,

right, this is not an inexpensive nominal thing.

I'm sure you cannot guess what kind of ticket

is widely sought after in fall and central Ohio

when people come to Columbus, right?

It's the Columbus Valley.

That's what everybody is begging to be taken to, right?

No, so it's the OSU football tickets, all those kinds of things.

This is where we're starting, you know, to say,

not just started to, we've been saying all these years.

Listen, if you've become friends over the years, right?

This actually happened at the state house

that there were two folks.

They were college roommates in their undergrad years.

When they both later in life,

when the staffs, their peers,

one became a state representative.

The other one was a lobbyist.

And they had been friends since college.

Does that mean they have to end their friendship?

No, it just means that they ever want to go golf

and what are they doing?

They're paying their own way.

If they want to vacation, they pay their leave.

They want to go to dinner.

I don't care if they're friends,

but we do not let people pick up the tab.

Take us to a game, take us to a show.

Here is a big misperception.

I think that still exists in Ohio.

That people will still tell me.

But yes, Susan, yes, I took the ticket to Hamilton

when it came through Ohio, through Columbus,

and was at the Ohio theater.

Yeah, I took the ticket, but it didn't influence me.

It didn't change the outcome.

It might be really clear.

This is not the bribery statute.

We're all good that bribes are bad and don't do it, right?

We're all together and that, right?

Don't take a breath.

But this isn't the bribery statute.

We do not have to demonstrate that an outcome was altered.

That behavior was changed.

All we have to do is demonstrate

that this person in public service

accepted that substantial thing of value

from the vendor, potential vendor,

person interested in matters for, regulated by.

This is why I would just say,

and I say this in all sincerity.

You heard Sarah say that I've been with the ethics

for a long time and I've said,

I've been with the state of Ohio almost 35 years.

I just say this in all earnestness.

I'm not using hyperbole.

You cannot name a gift that, to me,

makes it worth the risk of what I will lose.

There is, I don't care if you're talking about putting me

at first class on a plane to Paris.

It does not matter to me what that is.

It does not, to me, it doesn't balance out.

I could be a convicted criminal.

You're gonna read that about me

in the Columbus district.

My 91 year old mom would know that it's just not worth it

that go pay for your own way to see the Broadway show

or the OSU football or the go pay your own way

and we will be much, much in a much better place,

both as people in public service

and in how the public looks at all of us

as people in public service as well.

Concerns, questions, gifts on gifts

or anything else we've talked about so far.

Actually, I'm good.

Thank you, yes.

Could you speak to you?

So this is something that's come up in various forms

but like a soft opening for a restaurant.

Sometimes council will get put on the invite list

along with maybe nonprofit leaders in the city

that we also might be on those.

So it's kind of like it's not just council, you know,

but we might go and it's like food is half off

for everybody at the soft opening

or discounted in some way.

So how that into this?

I certainly would say you're always welcome to go.

You know what I mean?

What I would be really careful about though

is oh, it's an open bar.

You know what I mean?

Because if it starts adding up

and that's not supposed to open the entire community,

I would be more cautious there.

We have some advise you pins that do speak

to some of those specific situations that can occur.

I don't want anything that you cannot go and be supportive.

I'd be really careful about though.

You maybe just want to go and hang out there, you know,

and greet people, et cetera.

I once had a phone call.

It was actually somebody from the Ohio Environmental

Protection Agency that called me from a conference.

He was attending.

And bless his heart that even called me

because he said, Susan, I just noticed on the agenda

the luncheon was underwritten by or sponsored by waste management.

And he said, I inspect their landfills.

And he said to me, should I like run to Jersey Mike's

and get a sandwich?

And I was like, you are the cutest thing in the whole world.

Look at you being all ethical.

Well done.

We do have advisements that say no.

If it's something across the board,

everybody's invited to an educational event.

It's a normal catered thing.

The soft opening restaurant just gives me a little pause

about alcohol and things like that.

Not that I'm anti, you know, saying never have a glass of wine.

But that's what gets a bill going really quickly.

So I would just be, you know, put in the appearance

and maybe not indulge too much.

Yeah, that's that.

Well, yeah, yeah.

Thank you for opening the floor.

I love when people talk to me, believe it or not.

Other questions, concerns?

I'm like, already dashing all of our hopes already

when I can give you more fodder to hit us with, right?

So all right.

I thought you would someday we'll do a long run.

But I thought you'd enjoy the, this one

is happened to a training supervisor for the city of Columbus.

And I tell you the story because it's a good ending.

She, you know, I don't want you to feel like I'm

throwing someone under the bus, that she got in the mail

this plaque from a company they had used

for some training tools or online resources

saying they had named a star after her.

And so she's like, I don't know what to do.

So she reached out to us and we're doing all this research.

And in fairness, it's not a real well-regulated industry

kind of thing.

And you can get it from online $5 to like, you know,

this expensive kind of, you know, oh,

and they get all this plaque somewhere.

And I don't know how you identify which was yours

in the sky kind of thing.

And so when she realized they had spent like $200 though,

doing this whole naming a star kind of thing.

So they said, no, we're not going to undo it.

But what they did agree to do was change the name of the star.

So I kid you not.

The next time there is a beautiful starlit sky.

I want you to look up into celestial heavens

and try to find the star that's named City Training

Department, City of Columbus, Ohio.

It's up there, you all.

I think that's a really cool ending to that story.

All right, OK.

Then the next thing under the ethics law,

I do want to talk a little bit about,

is the public contract statute.

We are now in an area of law here where we do see

there's two felony provisions in the state

in the state of Ohio for ethics stuff.

One is about investing public money

to benefit ourselves family's business associates.

This is the one that we probably get a little more mileage on.

This is a fourth degree felony.

When someone uses their public role to obtain or try

to obtain a public contract, right?

For themselves, their families, their outside business

associates.

Now, I know this slide looks an awful lot

at the conflict one that I had up earlier.

Here is why, though, we see a felony

in the public contract role.

In all fairness, in the conflict of interest,

well, let's say that I really was

the city of Western building inspector.

And I go inspect the sun on that my sister

built the back of her house.

To be fair, I have committed a crime.

I have used the authority of my public position

to secure a thing of value, a past inspection

for a member of my family.

Bad idea.

First degree misdemeanor, don't do it.

In this part of the law, though, we

would be using our public role to secure public money

for ourselves, our families, or outside business associates.

So I know there is a far more aridite sounding definition

of the phrase public contract.

There are revised administrative codes.

But I speak in the vernacular.

So let me tell you my definition of public contract

after all these years of the ethics commission.

A public contract is anytime the city of Westerville

spends money.

And it's fine.

It's, of course, you spend money, whether it's something

as simple as we've had to buy a new clicker for the laptop

or we're going to build remodeling city hall, right?

It's a bit, it's fine.

It's totally completely normal.

But what this part of the law reminds us

is that recusal is mandatory per a felony provision.

If that contract benefits ourselves,

our families, those outside business associates.

So let's pretend as part of the remodeling of city hall

that the city of Westerville needs

to bring in a painting company, right?

And you say, oh, by the way, my adult daughter owns, you know,

no drip painting ink or whatever, right?

I hope there's not really a place like that

that I'm advertising for free.

I just made that about the time I had, right?

And so here's my question for all of you.

Let's pretend hypothetical.

I work for the city of Westerville in this hypothetical.

And my adult daughter has this painting company.

Knowing that I work for the city in this hypothetical

is my daughter even allowed to go after that painting contract

with the city, yes or no?

Yes, right, the restricting is not on her.

She's not a public employer official.

The restricting is on me.

This is gonna be my reaction.

Sweetie, Mama loves you to death, but you're on your own.

I am not putting a good word for you.

I'm not talking you up.

I'm not talking on the competition.

I'm not handling bid spec responses.

I'm not debating, deciding, having hallway conversations,

voting on and recommending, advocating,

lobbying, nothing.

You are completely on your own.

And if you do get the contract,

after I've completely recused myself 100%

in every way verbally and in writing formally and formally,

if you get the contract, I'm not your point person.

You don't come to me with questions, concerns,

follow up, complaints to vent.

You communicate with whoever they've assigned

as you're a liaison.

If that kind of recusal is possible,

could one of these folks get that contract?

That is possible.

Here's why I say if recusal is possible.

I wanna believe in a city of this size

that if I had that conflict that I'm a city employee

and my daughter owns a paint thing,

chances are somebody else can say,

yeah, we'll just make sure Susan's out of that conversation

will bring in Jackie instead or whatever.

You know, there are situations where it's not possible.

My husband's oldest sister is a fiscal clerk

in a rural township in Ohio.

She has openly told me,

if I had to recuse myself, Susan,

there's nobody left to do the work.

So in her situation, could her adult daughter

get the painting contract?

Absolutely not because she cannot recuse herself.

That's the difference.

Take advantage of the protection

that recusal does provide to you.

Now, I totally understand,

because I just got done saying,

hey, if it's your adult daughter,

if it's your business colleague in your private life,

as long as you can recuse,

people then kind of make the leap of,

oh, so if I own that paint company,

I'm on city council, I work for the city,

I too then, right?

Should be able to throw my hat in the ring

and be considered with that painting contract

as long as I recuse myself.

This is a different part of the statute, right?

That would say no, in general,

for anybody in this room, you have an outside business,

you work part-time there, you do consulting,

you sell widgets, you own a co-owning business,

whether you are hire electro-appointed,

I want you just to conclude right here right now,

that you will never do business with the city of Westville,

the actual city of it,

you will never sell goods and services,

I don't care if it's once in a while,

every blue moon, if it's regular, written,

there, if you know the law well,

is there an exception, yes,

but I don't wanna bore you with the exception too long

because I don't think it's gonna apply here, honestly.

If someone would have called us up and said,

hey, ethics commission, yeah.

The only painting company we can find

is one that's owned by our mayor.

Is that okay?

You know what we're gonna say?

We're gonna say, could you hold the line of it?

I'm gonna Google painting company,

Central Ohio, that we can rustle one up right.

There are situations really rural parts of Ohio

where they can meet that exception.

I'm just gonna ask you just to conclude right now,

you will never be in a business relationship

with the city, not just the department you served,

with city government in Westville.

Are we good so far?

All right, so one of our most common still,

I must get real quick here,

one of our most common violations still

under the public contract statute,

still sadly after all these years is this one.

Now before anybody panic,

this is not the prohibition of two people

who happen to be related to one another

by blood or by marriage, both working or serving

the city of Westerville.

Does that happen?

Of course it does, obviously it does.

Whether it's, my mom had an amazing career

in the engineers office of that public entity,

I wanna follow in her footsteps

or at large agency, sometimes I came many years ago

from a larger agency before I came to the ethics commission,

which was fairly small.

And I think in my 20s and 30s,

I think I went to at least three or four weddings

of people who met at the agency and got married

and now they're okay, not illegal.

I'm not convinced it's the best recipe

for her happy marriage, but you know, to each his own right,

but you know, not illegal.

The actual criminal behavior here is that same thing

just like me trying to obtain a painting contract

for my adult daughter in this case,

this one would be a public job.

Now when I said public contract is on public money,

it's meant that includes salaries,

that includes public jobs.

So again, is this a prohibition?

If you serve on city council, if you are a city employee,

does that mean your family members are never allowed

to apply for a public job?

It does not mean that.

What it means though is you recuse yourself

every way upside down backwards forwards,

every day the week and twice on Sunday

that we do not get involved.

We do not, you know, handle the resumes.

We do not service characters.

We don't write letters or emails or phone calls

or text recommending, we don't weigh in,

we don't stop by HR, we don't sit on interviews.

Nothing, not one single word, formally,

informally, verbally or in writing,

to try to advance someone in our family.

Now in all fairness, what's our definition of family?

If you were with me a couple of years ago and I was here,

there is an update to our definition of family

as a February of 25.

We do include now domestic partner as well.

Everything else is the same.

Now I will note here,

see this bottom one that says other relatives,

that's a little more extended.

Your nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles,

in laws, cousins, whatever.

Everybody else, it doesn't matter where they live.

Right, you can't say to me,

well my son is an adult and doesn't live at home anymore.

Or I've never lived with my stepmom,

she married my dad after I was adult, doesn't matter.

Everybody's from the more immediate family category.

It does not matter where they live.

If someone in your family wants to apply for a city job,

you're allowed to wish them well.

And that's it, that's it.

We don't, nothing else.

Unfortunately, this is still, as I said, a fairly common one.

So while I very much hope,

it's not an issue for the city of Westerville,

I would still ask you to keep an eye out for it

because I understand why you're at the restaurant soft opening

and someone says, oh, hey,

I noticed there's a job opening in Perkson, right?

Could you put it a good word for me?

I get it, that whole, it's not what you know too, you know?

But in government, that leads us down a path

of actually criminal behavior.

So just say, oh, go ahead and apply through the online thing

and I'll stay completely out of it.

And you'll be safe under the law.

Concerns, questions.

Rock on, you guys, good.

This is that one about the sales that I did mention already.

This is a still one that we do see way too much of.

And I understand why I can have it, it feels casual.

But again, it's a violation of the public's trust

to know that we are not being completely objective.

So again, just keep yourself safe and the city safe.

All right, let's see.

I went kind of fast here

because I didn't do all the different stories

that I do on an online one.

So there are our primary areas of law.

I didn't go deep into post-employment

if there is anybody thinking about your next chapter of life.

I'm going to step off the board

or I'm going to retire soon.

So please check out our post-employment information

on our website.

It's kind of a cooling off period.

That's not a legal term.

But it's kind of a cooling off period.

Uh-oh, somebody getting kicked off tonight?

Okay, your clock starts tonight, apparently, I don't know.

He said send it to Mike.

I didn't want it up.

Sorry.

It's too late.

Okay, you guys know the inside joke.

That's important.

That's important.

Okay.

He's not doing anything wrong.

Oh, someone who's not here is stepped off recently.

Yes.

Oh, forever.

Aw, bless it's hard.

Okay, so here's where that would now.

So let's say, let's say that person stepped off

and now they're working for the underwater basket

weaving business that I opened a little while ago

on our hypotheticals.

Right now he's working for an underwater basket

weaving business.

This would be a situation where if he's now working for me

and I say, hey, could you go speak to the city about XYZ?

Right?

He would still have to say, ooh, for this first year

I can't advocate for you before the very public body

that I had served, especially about anything

that I had participated on.

It's not a way to kind of dampen someone's adventures

after they leave.

If I left the state of Ohio employment

and go to work for a consulting company,

it doesn't mean I have to fake ignorance.

Everything I was, you know, expert on while I was here.

What it means is in that first year

I don't represent them on those matters

that we were involved in because the public stills

the right to know it's a fair playing field, right?

That what you don't want to happen is I retire

from the ethics commission on a Friday

and on Monday, I met my new job doing this.

Hey, friends from the state of Ohio,

you know that rule package you were working on?

I get now on this side of the fence

why they hate that could you switch it up for me?

It's just a way that the public always gets fair representation.

And the only other thing I would say for somebody

that might have stepped off is just a reminder,

I don't know how often in your line of work and service

that you all come into contact with information

that is statutorily kind of credential,

but if so, they've for HIPAA maybe it's a company trade secret

for me, it's investigations, no question about it.

It's just a reminder, there's no cooling off period.

As long as the information's confidential,

we don't reveal it.

I don't mean to sound modeling, but like for me,

I've been here two decades,

I am aware of investigations,

hundreds that have taken place,

most of which don't become public record or public knowledge.

If we close the case and say they did nothing wrong

or we did enough evidence to go to trial,

those go into the annals of confidential history

and I am required by statute to take that information to my grave,

as long as it's confidential.

So just I wanna let you know if that is a reality

for anybody else that might be coming up.

So I know we've done a pretty quick overview.

Here is our website, there's our phone number.

The podcast just so you know,

as much as we're kind of touting it,

it doesn't give legal advice, right?

They're short, they're 12 to 15 minutes long,

they're based on storytelling.

The whole idea is to get people comfortable enough to call us

and say, oh, they seem like they actually really wanna help.

So any other final questions, concerns, stories

that I can help with, yes sir, thank you.

Just that example at the end,

so that stuff can't be like foyer, like you can't.

Not our investigations.

No, no, that is specifically exempt from the public record.

The only thing in our investigative records

that become public record is what's called a settlement agreement.

So that's when someone says, okay,

I really don't wanna go to trial.

I think I'm gonna get addicted.

Is there something we could do?

And we set a lot of court.

That piece of paper that they sign saying,

I did this, I'm sorry, I won't do it again.

And here's what I'll do to mitigate it.

Sometimes it can be,

sometimes in more serious cases,

I'll step down from the public board or job.

Other times it's stuff like,

all right, I'll pay the vendor back the money

that I should have taken for the football ticket

that I didn't know.

Other times I'll take ethics training.

Sometimes we just call it a public rep or man

that we've essentially embarrassed them

in their local newspaper for a day or two, kind of thing.

That piece of paper, otherwise our stuff is exempt

from sunshine laws.

For a number of reasons.

Number one, I'm gonna ask any police officer around here.

You don't wanna give up every detail of your case

in the paper,

because you won't be able to finish your investigation.

Number two, it does protect sources,

that they won't have retaliation, et cetera.

And number three, honestly, it protects people who are innocent.

I mean, it'd be pretty easy if you were my opponent

and I'm running for office that I go to the ethics mission.

Hey, I'm pretty sure that they have a puppy mill

on their basement, right?

And if that were public record,

all you have to say, did they turn it out?

Well, there was an allegation,

turn out to be nothing.

Next thing you know on the newspaper,

allegation up, you know what I mean?

So it does protect people who are innocent as well.

It makes sense why it's like that, so yeah.

So just to conclude then, you know how to reach us.

It's a great honor as always to come here.

I've always said, you know, I, all right, full disclosure.

I live just over the border and you know a township, right?

I admit, but if all fairness, we've lived there.

My husband, I've lived there for 28 years.

And if it helps, I spend a lot of money in the rest of it.

All right.

All right, all right, all right.

My niece and I do the book club

that good vines every, you know,

every second Thursday of the month,

we're big co-blade fans, et cetera.

This really is a really amazing community.

I'm actually on the elder board

at Heritage Christian Church on Maxtown Road.

And we are relocating a guy to be our new lead pastor.

He's coming here from Colorado.

And he thinks he's in a commercial

because we all keep just selling west of it.

He's like, it couldn't be.

I like you guys that can go to a hallmark channel.

We're like, you really are.

It really is that special.

So I just want to say behalf of all of us

who have lived here for so long and love it here.

This is home.

Thank you for all that you guys do every day.

And especially I knew coming in here today,

what today was the anniversary.

I take the code of us downtown every day

and the code of parking rights right there

next to the fire department.

And I could see there was like a sunrise service

going on this morning.

So I just wanted to say on behalf of all of us

who remember that day.

My husband, I took that day off from work

of the funeral so we could stand

and show respect outside St. Paul's that day.

Thank you for all that you do in the face of good times,

tear jerking times and everything in between.

It's a really an honor to be here as always.

Thank you so much for the rest of your night.

It was great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Well, if there are no objections from council

and no other staff items, then we are adjourned.

No, no, no, no.

Okay, she's looking at me.

I don't know.

Look at she was saying no.

We do.

Only I get to leave.

You almost stay.

The lawyers get to talk to the lawyer's turn.

Ah, okay.

I don't have the agenda.

I don't know.

Is that me?

Come on.

I don't know.

What else are we doing?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

What?

What?

What are we doing?

It's a tear.

Oh, like you don't remember what?

Oh, like you never remember.

You guys don't get paid by the word.

Why the slot?

Okay, Mike.

You guys do it just that.

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah.

I love everyone over here.

What?

I'm just trying to focus on you.

Andrew should have a podcast too.

Well, it's funny you mentioned that

because, well, first of all,

Council, good evening.

Josh and I are here to follow a very difficult act.

Susan Willockie is a phenomenal presenter.

Distilling complex, difficult topics

and a digestible manner.

So now you get two show of attorneys

and write down the street, talk about public records

and open meetings.

But two question council member grounds.

Yeah.

Don't have a podcast.

Did work on W-O-U-B radio.

Way back in the day in Athens.

So, some symmetry there.

Very little.

All right.

So Josh and I are going to kind of mere cat this.

We're both standing here.

We're going to tag team these slides.

But tonight's presentation is about public records

and open meetings.

Specifically, how things have evolved

in the digital current state that we're in.

We're going to talk about actual examples.

We're going to talk about these substance of the law.

We're going to have some examples where Council can interact

and say, is it a public record?

Could it be a meeting?

There may be stick figures involved

because you have two attorneys who are putting together

very simple slides.

But let's get started.

So, Susan talked about the why.

Why does the public records act in the open meetings act?

Why do they matter?

Well, first of all, acronym disclaimer.

So, Oprah is the public records act.

OMA is the open meetings act.

So, you're going to see that throughout the slide deck,

but just to preface that.

But these two laws matter because they ensure

that public bodies act with trust and transparency.

So, in a lot of ways, similar to what Susan talked about

with ethics.

They're also important because, as I mentioned before,

in this state, where we have cell phones, computers,

technology to communicate with our fellow colleagues,

council member, staff, whomever,

risk increases with both the open meetings act

and the public records act.

I mean, you think about it 25 years ago,

a public record was a physical document,

and it lived in a file cabinet somewhere.

Now, it's on your computer, it's on your phone,

it's on a server, and there are real implications there,

which we'll talk about tonight.

Now, Susan talked about some of the consequences

of violating ethics law.

There are consequences to violating the public records act

and the open meetings act as well.

We'll talk about some of those.

But the good news is, a lot of the issues

with the public records act and open meetings act

occur not because somebody's trying to hide something,

not because there's some nefarious activity.

It's because people want to collaborate, need to communicate,

and they're not fully aware of the guard rails

within which they have to act.

So, the good news is, we're going to have some best practices

for you tonight.

So, here comes the first Miracats switch.

Okay, so part one of Andrew Nies' podcast,

which is Oprah and Oma, is Oprah, right?

So, the Ohio Public Records Act,

let's talk about the rights and obligations a little bit,

but before that, the presentation we have

is a high level overview of both these things

with some details and some facts.

You're probably familiar with the Sunshine Manual,

that is a 177-page document published

that outlines the Sunshine Laws, contains a lot of examples,

things like that.

This presentation includes a lot of that,

but much of the Sunshine Manual,

the Sunshine Laws is based off of actual cases,

actual examples that happened,

and a lot of that is baked into our presentation.

So, the Ohio Public Records Act is codified in 149.43

of the Higher Revised Code,

and applies to public offices,

which is defined very broadly, right?

That is any state or local body created by Ohio Law

to perform a government function.

This presentation obviously is gonna be very tailored

towards political subdivisions and municipalities, right?

At its base level, there's really one big right,

and that is for requesters,

to inspect or obtain public records.

Anybody can obtain or request public records,

and they can do so anonymously.

The city does not have the right to request who the person is

or why they're making that request,

and requests can be made in any format.

So, they can do it in phone, they can come in person,

they can send in letter, or they can send it in email,

okay, the request can come in any manner,

and the city has an obligation to respond

within a reasonable amount of time.

Reasonable amount of time is not defined in code,

there's not a specific timeline that says,

you got an hour, you got a day, you got two days, right?

It really is based off the facts and circumstances

with the request, okay?

It doesn't need to be immediate,

but it's a lot of times based off the type of record,

the volume, whether there's redactions necessary,

whether there's legal review,

and whether it's a voluminous,

there sometimes will get requests that are so voluminous,

will reveal things in part, okay,

because it takes time to go through.

So, what is a public record?

So, lawyers love tests and parts,

so there's a three kind of part analysis

that you go through to determine if it's a public record.

So, first we have whether it's a document,

a document is defined very broadly,

and so with the whole Public Records Act,

you'll see our main focus is on the content,

not necessarily the format or the manner,

or the type of document that they're requesting,

because you'll see here, paper, email, text, chat, message,

voicemail, all these things can be considered a document.

It can be either created by the Public Office

or just received by the Public Office.

Somebody for the city does it need to actually create it

for it to be a public record,

if it's received from a private entity,

that includes it as well,

and then you'll see our definition here

for exactly what falls as the,

what's within the scope of it.

So, generally we say the determining factor,

meaning content, right, is any communication,

if it documents the activities of the organization,

so that's something to do here,

let's go back to a bunch,

does it document the activities of the organization?

So Josh said that we love tests, we love analysis,

we love to figure out how to distill somewhat complex issues

into quick tests.

So what you see on the screen is really a simple analysis

about what Sarah does, what the team does

when we receive a Public Records request.

The first question is, is it a public record?

So Josh mentioned before that it's any document

that reflects the activities of the city,

that is incredibly broad, right?

So if we answer yes, it's a public record,

and we step to number two.

Number two is, is it exempt?

So we're gonna talk about it here in a few slides,

but there are statutory exemptions for certain records,

or content within records,

which would allow the city or public office

to either withhold the document entirely

or adapt portions of it that are sensitive.

And then the next test is, okay,

it's a record, it's exempt, it's still a record,

how long do we have to retain it for?

So I'm gonna let Josh talk about retention.

So as you can imagine, the city records are totally,

are voluminous, right?

There's tons of records all the time,

we're actually have some stats here in a little bit

about how many records we have

and how many requests we have,

but generally we have a record management program, right?

They'll hire revised code calls it out,

and we and our codified ordinances have chapter 157,

which talk about record management program,

which you're gonna hear next week

at the council meeting about as well.

But long story short, we have a retention schedule

that's managed and maintained by a records commission.

They meet every six months, they review this schedule,

and they update things as needed.

We have a little screenshot over here

of what their records retention schedule looks like.

It's called the RC2, okay,

and this outlines exactly what documents

need to be kept for certain periods of time.

And again, an example on the side here

where you'll see the record title and description,

the retention period, and the type, okay?

What's important in reviewing their retention periods

is it doesn't matter the format that the record is in,

whether it's a text, whether it's an email,

okay, it matters about what is the content

and how long it's kept for.

There's certain things that are kept for time periods.

You'll see on here one year, you'll see one to five years,

and then you'll see at the bottom here that's highlighted,

there's this thing called,

until no further administrative value.

So there's a lot of public records

that we have to keep until it provides

no further administrative value, okay?

Summarizing that, that's effectively,

as long as it's useful and relevant to the city functions,

okay, if we need it to provide our duties to the city,

that's how long we need to keep it.

Once it provides no further administrative value,

as long as it's no longer useful and relevant,

we can get rid of it.

And that's a common one, if you look

through our retention schedule, which is very long,

you'll see that in a lot of cases.

I feel like we need those mics that just go on

on the pills, sometimes, more around.

So just to follow up on Josh said about

no further administrative value.

So what they showed on the retention schedule there,

I think this is important.

As you can see, the highlighted category here,

that's for email, communications,

and transitory communications, right?

It's not really governs a lot

and covers a lot of what we all communicate with.

So just note that those are retained

until there are no further administrative value.

Because we'll talk about those in more detail here in a bit.

All right, so we mentioned exemptions.

There are statutory exemptions in the revised code.

There's actually 54 of them.

They live in revised code session 14943A1A

through A1BBB.

So it's a lot of exemptions, right?

And really, it's a lot of where

it's a lot of interpretation involved in this section.

Because these exemptions are written by the legislature

in a way that's somewhat clear on what they intended

to cover in the way of reduction or withholding.

But it's not entirely clear.

So I'd say the majority of litigation on public records

lives in these exemptions.

And what you'll see here is that there

are mandatory and discretionary exemptions.

Mandatory is actually something Susan mentioned before.

So a mandatory exemption means the public office

is prohibiting from releasing that information.

So if you look here, Susan mentioned HIPAA, right?

So there is certain health-related medical information

that city cannot shout out release.

These are the ones here are discretionary, right?

So that means the city has the ability

to release the document or to withhold it in its entirety

if it's entirely exempt or redacted.

And you can see these are really sensitive matters.

So we're talking about security records, right?

So maybe how this building's laid out.

It's a justice center.

So you've got to keep that secure.

Privilege.

Or it's sort of privileged information.

We'll talk about that here in a few minutes.

This infrastructure one, there's a relevant example.

And I think Sarah can attest to this.

But the city has a lot of GIS data

on where infrastructure is located.

Some of that's sensitive.

It could be electric, it could be water,

it could be we connect, it could be any of that.

But there are partners out there

in the way of government entities of contractors

who need to accomplish something.

There requires no where that is.

So the general approach, and this is not always,

but generally what the city does is to say,

OK, we'll disclose this to you discretionarily.

However, we want you to sign a non-disclosure agreement saying

that you won't release this information more broadly

and you won't pass it on to a third party

and you're using it specifically for the basis

you're requesting for.

This blew me away, OK?

So as Josh and I prepared for this presentation,

we see a lot of requests, public records requests,

and guidance requested on legal matters.

So what we did is to reach out to the two primary departments

that handle public records.

So our amazing clerk here handles a substantial portion

and then the records team for Westable Police

who works right through this door

handles another substantial portion.

So these are estimates, all right?

These are from 2025 and what you'll see

is that in 2025, estimated, there were nearly 12,000

public records requests.

And the estimate for staff time for the clerk

in the clerk's office and the Westable Police Records

team is that took 2,100 hours to respond to these requests.

Now, as Josh said before, not every request

is going to take a lot of time.

There are some where it's an easy record passing over.

But there are some complex sensitive records

that require a lot of review, reduction,

and then production to the party that's requested.

Another note here, this doesn't cover or account for time

spent by other divisions gathering these documents,

providing them to the clerk or to the records division.

So it's really just the tip of a rather substantial iceberg.

But when I saw the numbers, I was shocked.

Not shocked, but it was a lot.

And you still respond to our emails.

All right, so any questions yet?

This is really ribbing stuff, right?

Well, OK, here comes the interactive portion

of tonight's presentation.

So I'm going to turn it back over to Josh,

and we're going to walk through some actual, not actual,

fictional examples.

Fictionals.

OK, so example one, let's talk about a text message.

So let's say a resident texts council member Washburn here

and says, hey, can you stop the contractor

from starting work there on my street tomorrow?

And you say, thanks for reaching out.

I'm going to connect you to my service department.

And resident says, OK, is this a public record?

Yes, it is, of course, because it documents city activities

to remember the manner in which it comes through a text

does not make a difference.

It's the content.

Does this talk about city work?

It sure does.

So this is a public record, and that was an easy one.

That was an easy one.

Again, this could be Councilman Washburn.

This could be anybody else.

But I think city administration would be very pleased

with this response.

Please reach out there, actually, to the service department,

right?

Councilman Grimes would be going to bed.

8.47 p.m., OK?

All right, so here we have a staff email to a council member.

And what the staff member is telling the council member

is that we checked on the issue you reached out about.

It's been logged.

It's scheduled for our next maintenance cycle.

We'll notify you once the date is confirmed.

It's on city council.

You can see it's at Westerville.org, Westerville.org.

What do we think?

Public record?

Yes.

It documents city activity.

So it is.

It'll real a public record.

All right, so let's talk about an email from the law department.

Let's say Andrew emails all you guys with a memo

about litigation strategy for zoning matter, OK?

Does this document a city activity?

Does, right?

Is it a public record?

No.

No.

It is exempt from disclosure because attorney client privilege.

Now, attorney client privilege is a very important note

with this, OK?

The client, you all hold the privilege.

So you can waive the privilege.

So if we send this email to you and then you forward it

to a neighbor, you forward it to the public, you forward it

to somebody else, then that privilege is waived.

And then this is a public record

and it is discoverable.

So it's important when you receive these matters,

you pay good attention to whether, OK, is this attorney

client privilege, then I shouldn't waive this privilege.

I needed to make sure it stays in the manner

that we gave it to you.

And just to follow up on that, if council members

of staff have read a question about whether or not

to disclose or forward a privileged email or document,

just reach out first.

We can kind of mitigate and we'll understand

what in the document you want to share, how best to share.

So we talked about texts, we talked about emails,

let's talk about chat.

So this is really becoming increasingly prevalent.

There's Google chat, there's MS Teams, there's Slack,

there's any number of apps through which

staff can communicate, council members can communicate.

This is a fictional example from Google.

And what you have here is multiple members

from multiple departments talking about the very

made up infrastructure modernization.

Not a real thing, but they're trying to determine

whether in the what extent the city could qualify

for grants or funding under this program.

So it's a different medium.

What do we think does it discuss?

City business, city activities?

Is it a public record?

Guys are crushing it.

All right, so our city engineer is not here.

But let's just say he has a calendar invite at Fancy

Stakehouse with one of the most well-known contractors

in Westerville, Lotion for the Road.

So this calendar invite, right?

It's just calendar invite, OK?

He's having dinner with somebody.

Is this a public record?

Is it document city activities?

And note the caption, it is a dinner meeting

for city collaboration.

Is this calendar invite, with Lotion for the Roads,

a public record?

Yes.

It sure is.

I'm sure Nate has that on his calendar.

What I'm sure.

Susan Wilkew would warn the very fake city engineer

in that situation that Stake dinner is substantial.

The source may be a proper, pay your own way, right?

So is not everything on our calendar,

on our council calendar?

Most likely.

Yeah, OK.

Can't say blanket, everything, yes, period on that.

Yeah, almost sort of my assumption.

All right, so we talked about calendar invites.

Here's an internal policy.

So this is a memorandum from the Information

Security Administrator to the CIO.

And it is a cybersecurity policy.

It's sent from city accounts.

It's on city letterhead.

What do we think?

Home of record?

Is there anything secretive?

Well, so you see this rather large disclaimer here, right?

So this is a public record, but it's exempt from disclosure

because there are specific caravans,

which I think are mentioned here, 149-433,

for security records, and then the very new,

as of about six months ago, RC9.64,

which exempts cybersecurity records from disclosure.

All right, so let's say there's maybe a group text

that goes out, so hypothetically think maybe a staff member

has a birthday on Valentine's Day, right?

And let's just say you guys call him Valentino.

Oh, that's very time.

So there's a text that goes out saying,

hey, happy birthday, Valentino.

It's between council members and staff.

Is this a public record?

Good job.

It is not because it does not document city business,

does not document city activities, or anything like that.

So this is not a public record.

What kind of a day is it, sir?

For the front, for the comment.

All right, so the ones we've looked at so far

are fictional, absolutely made up examples.

This is a real example.

So what we have here is 9 of 13 council members

texting from personal accounts,

talking about potential support for upcoming legislation.

That is not a nice one.

This is not, could be very clear.

To be able to, this is a real example from the city of Kent.

We're going to talk about it in a little more detail later.

Because it did lead to some open meetings

act, questions, violations, suspicions.

But just to be clear, we have a group text

with real council members from 2024.

Is it a public record?

Yes, it is.

It is.

Because it documented the activities of the city of Kent.

And just a note, they believe it was a public record as well

because they were released after a public records request.

All right, so I think this is the first table tonight.

We're not going to go through each one of these.

But here are some best practices for council

when using digital communication.

So the best approach is to use your Westerville.org accounts,

to use your city technology, to use city channels

to communicate about city business.

You can use personal devices to communicate about city business,

but communicating on those devices

makes those documents public records.

So there could become a point where those records have to be

provided to the city to respond to a request.

This one is really cliche, but it's kind of a test.

Before you send something, think about what I want this to be

on Channel 4 News tonight.

Because if it's a public record talking about city business,

it's not exempt.

And there is a public records request.

The city has a legal obligation to provide it.

So that assumption is kind of the baseline way to proceed,

and at least the way we recommend proceeding.

And with that, some more tips and advice

with email management, personal accounts,

sensitive and privileged content, I will go through all these.

But you guys have the packet and things.

But if you ever have questions, the best thing

you can do with public records, consult the clerk.

Obviously, she deals with a ton of these.

So she's very experienced with it, contact a law department,

or any other public records, designate.

And with that, we go to part two of our podcast.

So let's talk about OMA.

So the Open Meetings Act.

Again, this is codified in their higher revised code,

121.22, and there's three requirements.

So public bodies and meetings, they have to provide advance

notice, they have to be open to the public in minutes,

have to be maintained.

Notice, openness, and minutes.

With minutes, one thing we always talk about

is what exactly has to be in the minutes.

It's not a verbatim transcript of the proceedings.

The standard that's used is an individual who

did not attend the meeting, who's reading the minutes.

They have to understand and appreciate

the rationale behind the decisions that you made.

So when you review the minutes, that's essentially

what you're reviewing.

It's not a verbatim transcript.

That is the standard that they use.

And obviously, the purpose of the Open Meetings Act

is when public bodies take official action

and conduct deliberations upon official business.

The public may attend and observe or review the minutes

afterwards.

And as with the Open Meetings Act, excuse me,

with public records laws and Open Meetings Act,

it is very fact and circumstance specific.

A lot of the things we're going to talk about

are based on actual cases that have taken place.

There's a lot on this slide.

We're not going to go through each definition in detail,

but these are some of the foundational concepts under one.

So just to touch on a few, Josh mentioned before,

the intent of OMA is to ensure that public bodies

deliberate and discuss public business in Open Meetings.

So there's the first two.

Executive sessions are routinely used

by public bodies throughout the state.

And it's really the general assembly's recognition

that there are sensitive matters that public bodies have to

or should be able to discuss behind closed doors.

So you see some examples there.

And these are common accounts on staff,

but confidential business information, litigation,

security, things that, if these were discussed in public,

could do damage to the city's processes further.

Now, the important part is that no formal action can be taken

in executive session.

It has to happen in the Open Meetings Act,

but there are forms for discussion here

with executive sessions.

Josh talked about meetings.

We'll talk about here in a second how

that can be done in person or electronically.

This is an important note because we have counsel here tonight.

But there are numerous boards and commissions here

in the city that are also public bodies.

Essentially, if you're operating under the city's purview

with decision-making authority or state purview

with decision-making authority, you're probably a public body.

Now, there's a lot of case laws, counseling,

glass-go-nose about whether into what extent,

some tertiary committees may be a public body subject to OMA,

but that's out there.

But think about planning commission, BZA, URB,

the records commission is one, finance audits, another one.

So there are multiple committees, subcommittees here

in the city that are public bodies.

This last one goes by a couple of different names.

We're calling it a serial meeting for purposes of tonight.

It's also known as a round robin

and it's also known as a walking corum.

But essentially, it's members meeting sequentially,

not at the same time, to discuss the same matter

of public business.

And ultimately, if that happens amongst the corum,

that becomes a meeting.

This is corny, but the first time I saw a serial meeting,

I thought it was maybe council members just

sitting there in the materials and cor- wouldn't that be?

That could happen in an executive session.

Or an actual session.

All right, so those are some foundational concepts.

So what is a meeting?

And remember this, because you're going to be asked here

in a few minutes with some examples.

A meeting is a pre-arranged gathering amongst a corum

of a public body for this council that's for,

or discussing or deliberating public business.

Now, in this new digital era, there's

been a lot of focus on this second bull in here.

There can be electronic meetings.

And this is tripped up quite a few public bodies

throughout the state.

Those electronic meetings can occur

via video conference, text, email, tweet, social media,

any number of ways.

And if you have a corum of that public body

discussing public business, it's a meeting.

And the problem is, as we'll talk about,

if it's a meeting, and there's no notice, openness,

or minutes, that's likely an omovilation.

So these two words here at the bottom

are ones we talked about, but discussion deliberation

really means a body weighing options, discussing

substantive policy, having serious debates

about how to guide their board, their commission,

their body forward.

Now, courts have interpreted this in a couple of different ways.

And there are some exceptions to the discussion

deliberation standard, which are informational sessions.

Attending public presentations.

Attending informal, private presentations.

And then spontaneous and prompt to isolated conversations

generally, according to courts,

do not amounts to the level of deliberation discussion

and therefore likely aren't meetings.

All right, so let's get into some examples here.

So first one, all right.

So let's say, again, on the basis

that Westville City Council group of seven,

let's say two or three people have a pre-arranged gathering,

and you meet for coffee and you're walking

through an upcoming agenda item.

But there's just two or three of you.

Do we have a public meeting?

Come on, Joseph, they said they should be hard.

Oh, this is easy.

No.

It is not, right?

Because we do not have a quorum.

There's not four of you.

But always be careful.

We talked about serial meetings, right?

If you're building a consensus with one or two others

directly before or right out of the meeting,

you're calling a couple others to get them on the phone,

and you're not reaching that four,

that can be considered a serial meeting

if you're building that consensus

with others outside of a formal meeting.

But let's just start.

So complexity level in these examples will pick up.

The graphics will not.

We're still going to work with some of these stick figures.

And in this one, you can see five fictional members

of a public body drinking coffee.

You can see the steam coming off it.

It's not alcohol, as far as I can tell.

But let's say we have a majority of council members gathering

externally at a coffee shop or elsewhere

to talk about city business, even if it's mostly informal.

What do we think?

This is a meeting.

And again, back to the point that if it's not properly

noticed, it's not open to the public,

and there are minutes going to be a violation.

OK.

Group texts are telephone call, right?

So if four or more are in a group text

discussing public business, or we all hop on a call

discussing public business, right?

You're not meeting here.

Do we have a public meeting?

Absolutely.

We do.

And again, notice, open, and minutes always required.

Are these graphics the worst you've ever seen?

Maybe.

They're pretty rough, right?

Well, that's what you let lawyers develop concept

or a slide without Christmas assistance.

This is what you get.

Just click them offline.

Hours and hours of preparation.

Minutes and minutes and minutes of finding the image,

copying it, basing it into it.

You know what it's beautiful?

Well, thank you.

That line.

That's so like 30 seconds.

All right.

So here we have the serial meeting scenario

that we talked about before.

So you have four members of a public body,

talking, texting, communicating about the same issue.

But it starts with one.

Number one goes to member two, goes to member three,

goes to member four.

They're all talking about the same matter,

the same public business.

What do we think?

Yeah.

All right, let's ask this.

Let's say that one in two met in person,

two, called three, three, texted four.

Right, so it doesn't have to be this stupid graphic

thrown on the telephone, but it can be any method

of communication.

It can be verbal.

It can be on the telephone.

It can be five years.

Yeah, I think it's a little like that.

It's stretched out.

All right, last hypothetical.

Let's just say that there is a former council member

who has a book signing.

But let's just say it, and it's pre-arranged.

It's scheduled, this individual scheduled the book signing,

and everybody is so eager to go and get their copy

and get their copy signed.

That for a more of you go to this public event,

this pre-range gathering, this book signing, OK?

Is the book signing a public meeting?

Just by the mere fact that you are gathering,

does not mean it's a meeting.

It has to be public discussion and or deliberation

of business, right?

Always be careful, though, if it shifts into discussing

business, you're in that area where we're skipping

into it right in an open meetings act violation, OK?

But just attending the book signing for a more of you

in and of itself is not a violation.

And now we'll go through some case log examples as well

so you can see kind of an actual practice

how this has worked.

All right, so we're shifting away from stick figures

into actual news articles involving actual public bodies.

What we see here is the headline on the left.

It's from the City of Columbus in 2024.

And what happened is that through public records requests,

the order of state concerned citizens picked up

the fact that Columbus City Council may have violated

the Open Meeting Act.

Essentially what they did was to, I believe,

was every member of council received an email from one member

and it went around the entire group saying,

please review this draft legislation.

Please add your comments to it, which is a serial meeting,

as we talked about.

There are digital records of it, which were requested

by the public.

And then what really tipped the public off

was not so much the emails, but one member from City Council

went on social media and said, this resolution

was the result of collaboration and coordination

with my colleagues.

So I think that tipped off the public records requesters

who then tipped off the order of state.

I don't believe this has been resolved.

I don't think it's actually resulted in penalties,

but it did certainly result in several news articles about it.

Wasn't it the same topic as the example

of the text message that you've got?

Yeah.

Council Member Grimes has Claire Voins

because here's the text we saw before.

Oh, yes.

Here's the result of it.

So this is a very similar instance in Canton.

The difference was that instead of using email

to build consensus to workshop the content of the legislation,

what they did was use a group text.

And as we talked about that text was subject to disclosure

through a public records request.

And then resulted in this news article, again,

I'm not sure what happened with the City of Canton Council,

but it certainly did hit the media.

So I think Josh is going to talk about one

of the most notorious cases from recent history.

Yeah, probably the most significant violation

and really open meetings act.

History is the Cincinnati, the gang of five.

OK, so the gang of five was a big deal.

Made a lot of headlines.

And it's essentially where five council members for Cincinnati

were in a group text.

And they were responding and discussing

about how they were going to keep their city manager

and get rid of their mayor.

They then made a press release about how

they felt about this, all five of them.

And a member was like, man, it's really weird.

This was never discussed at a public meeting.

There's no minutes of this.

And so they did a public records request.

And these texts were sent out and it determined

that they did violate the Open Meetings Act.

And there were damages that had to be

pay actual physical money damages.

You'll see the numbers here.

There's $101,000 settlement.

There was 75,000 illegal fees.

There was additional turmoil after this

with the city manager leaving.

And ultimately, it ended up being like a half a million dollars

just from this group text that the city of Cincinnati

had to pay out over time.

So it's just not a slap on the wrist, right?

There is actual monetary damages that could be paid

for these violations.

And then there were even criminal charges

with tampering afterwards for one of the council members.

So again, there can be significant liability

for you individually and as a council member in these cases.

All right, so we're in the home stretch.

So we've talked about some of the examples

of what not to do.

We've shown you some fictional ones.

We've shown you some real ones.

In the same thing with additional business.

I think in the next several meetings

you're gonna have multiple additional business topics.

What council is gonna have the opportunity to hear

from staff about a potential proposal,

vet it, provide consensus back to staff,

and then potentially see the next step.

Whether that's legislation, motion, project, whatever it is.

So two really powerful tools there.

The other one is when we talked about

before executive sessions, right?

So these are for specific,

statutorily permitted topics,

but it gives council the ability

to talk about sensitive matters and a closed-door meeting

and then come out and make the actual formal action

in a meeting.

So there are multiple tools for you to use.

And again, tonight's not to scary.

It's to make you aware of the guardrails

to show you some of the tools you have

and to provide some silly examples

with stick figures about how things could go sideways.

So from the examples we've gave, from the cases,

if you read the Sunshine Man,

you'll see a lot of the concerns

with the Open Meetings Act.

Comes when you're outside of this room, right?

It comes from group texts, emails, chats, phone calls.

Those are things we gotta be cognizant of.

Serial meetings, building consensus

by tacking on conversations.

And again, you'll see they're pulling,

figuring out how members are gonna vote,

and then also appearance.

When you go in public, when you're going to restaurants,

when you're going to book signings,

which I'm sure everyone's going to, right?

Those are the places where the public appearance

of impropriety could be there, okay?

And so we have to just be cognizant

of those things, all right?

All right, last slide.

Last slide.

So I think we covered a lot of ground.

I think like Susan Willicki said earlier,

this could be a multi-day topic

to really dig into exemptions,

to dig into case long, to dig into the statutes.

So it's really, as she said, a cliff snow version.

And from those cliff snows, cliff, cliff, cliff.

Cliff, cliff.

Cliff?

No, singular, cliff.

Cliff, no, slow, cliff.

I'm here in plain sense.

What does call it, the abbreviated version

tonight, the two takeaways are with Oprah,

the Public Records Act.

If it's anything that documents city activities,

assume it may be a public record

and subject to disclosure.

With OMA, anytime there's a majority involved

in your discussing or deliberating public business,

assume it's a meeting.

Even if it's not, assume it is,

and then try to figure out how to have that conversation

in a more permissible manner.

And I think Susan, I feel like we're copying Susan.

I feel like she copied us.

But one of the biggest takeaways

is proactive coordination is the best thing to do.

If your spidey sense is tingling that, okay,

this, if I send this, this could be a public record

that could portray me in this city,

this project in a negative light,

think about it before we send it.

Or reach out to our phenomenal clerk,

the Public Records Designee,

or your team in the law department,

we can provide guidance on how to,

potentially formulate that message,

that communication, that document,

in a way that protects your interest in the cities.

All right.

Any questions for anyone?

I do have one.

Yeah.

Back to the Attorney Client Privilege emails.

If you were to say to somebody outside

of the Attorney Client Privilege,

Andrew told us this,

would that wave the privilege

so somebody could, that would make it so

that email that we got was a public record?

It's a really good question.

I don't believe just mentioning the general content

of an email or memo, Waves Privilege.

Now, if there was multiple tables in there

with direct advice saying in scenario X,

do Y and scenario C, do B, and you convey that,

that could potentially wave it.

But I think it really depends.

I think just general comments probably not.

But again, the recommendation is if you have questions

about devolging privileged information,

reach out first and we can formulate it in a way

that lets you know that what you're conveying

won't wave privilege.

I can just see somebody saying,

well, the city attorney told us and then blah, blah, blah,

and they're like, oh, they did.

I'd like to see that email.

Yeah, so in that case, if you just said an email exists

and a public records request came in,

I think it's still subject,

it's existence doesn't wave privilege.

Yeah, I'm saying that you said specifically

what you told us in the email.

That would be my concern.

You're getting closer.

Yeah, that's an error.

Good question.

Any other questions?

David, you have to have some question.

I did not have, I said something.

Yeah, that was good.

I'd be disappointed if you didn't have some more.

Yes, quite.

It's quite interesting.

He asked questions.

So let him know.

We definitely, these are great, but we,

like we, I'm on the wrong road too.

I know.

Don't let him bully you.

Maybe David's smarter than you.

It's getting real faster, you know?

That's true.

All right, well, we have no other questions.

Thank you.

Certainly.

Certainly.

They clapped a lot.

We still have a lot of questions.

Right away with the camera.

This is being recorded, right?

I just want to make sure that.

This is our first episode of the Pollock Answers.

That's what it is.

All right.

OK, well, let's try this again.

There are no other objections in nothing else from Council.

Then we are adjourned.

Beautiful.