Borough officials must separate official, personal duties

June 24, 2005

DARRELL L. BREESE/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - The Mat-Su Borough Assembly on Tuesday unanimously approved a resolution addressing the separation between personal business and borough business when traveling on the borough's tab and public hearing procedures.

The biggest change in policy is a clarification of how assembly members handle personal and borough business while traveling at taxpayers' expense.

Under the new policy, elected officials may not conduct personal business or lobby on behalf of an employer, agency or organization while traveling on the borough's dime for training, conferences or lobbying efforts on the borough's behalf.

The policy change continued to stress that personal business or lobbying efforts need to be done entirely at the expense of the elected official, and be separated by at least three days from the borough business being conducted.

"It's not that anyone in particular has abused borough funding for personal gain," Assembly Member Jody Simpson said. "There was no clear guidelines spelled out and in order to avoid the appearance of any improper activity, this addressed several key areas."

The three-day period aligns the assembly's policy for separation of personal and borough business with the policy already in place for borough employees.

There was considerable debate about how personal business is to be defined under the policy. Assembly Member Jim Colver inquired if returning a phone call would be in violation of the policy.

"We're making this more complicated than it needs to be," Assembly Member Bill Allen said in response to the debate. "It's simply a matter of common sense. We don't need to fill this up with a bunch of lawyer language."

Also changed under the resolution was the procedure for public testimony before the assembly, to allow for proxy testimony to be read and for clarification when an individual is speaking for both an organization and individually.

Written proxy testimony may now be read into the record, however, the person presenting the proxy testimony forfeits their individual right to address the body.

"Considering the size of the borough, this is an important change in policy," Simpson said. "This way, those who cannot attend a meeting can still have their voice heard if they can find an individual to act as a proxy."

The other public testimony change is entirely for record-keeping purposes and call for a break in testimony between individual statements and those made on behalf of an organization.

Darrell Breese may be contacted at 352-2267 or darrell.breese@frontiersman.com.