General Advisory Opinions Are Very Useful
A couple of months ago, the Ohio Ethics Commission did something very
wise and valuable: it drafted <a href="http://www.ethics.ohio.gov/Opinions/2010-03.html" target="”_blank”">an advisory
opinion on nepotism rules</a>, gathering information from years of
partial, specific advisory opinions, and providing examples. It even
gives excellent definitions of each of the relevant terms, including
such generally applicable terms as "public contract" and
"anything of value."<br>
<br>
Formal advisory opinions are extremely useful, but often problematic, in that
they tend to be overly legalistic, specific to facts that might not
arise
often, and difficult to access. Some forms of indexing, for example, by
both term and ethics code provision, facilitate the job of consulting
relevant advisory opinions, but it is difficult for non-lawyer
officials to do this themselves. In fact, most of them won't even know
the advisory opinions exist, where to find them, or how to read or use
them.<br>
<br>
For all these reasons, the availability of general advisory opinions
such as this one can make an official's job much easier. Have a
question about nepotism rules? Here's most everything you need to know
about it.<br>
<br>
The general advisory opinion is the latest <a href="http://www.ethics.ohio.gov/AdvisoryOpinion_Index.html" target="”_blank”">index </a>entry
in
the list of advisory opinions on nepotism, but there is nothing in
the index that says this is a general opinion, which officials will
want to consult first. It would be useful to include the advisory
opinion as <a href="http://www.ethics.ohio.gov/EducationandPublicInfo_Publications.html#Inf…; target="”_blank”">an
information
sheet</a> on the EC website's Informational Materials page.<br>
<br>
Most local government EC's will not have 25 years of opinions to pull
together and summarize. But it would still be worthwhile to formulate
such general opinions either under the rubric of "advisory opinion" or
as information sheets that interpret ethics provisions and give
examples
of what situations they apply to and do not apply to. Guidance before
the fact is the most important role of an ethics commission.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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