The Gilmer County Board of Tax Assessors (BOA) will soon add a code of ethics policy to its existing procedure.
Before giving the news of the likely resignation of Board Member Jeff Williams on August 16th, Chairman Tom Porter said he would like to table the proposal of a new code of ethics. With the absence of Williams, this meant only four members were present during the meeting and, after explaining this, Porter said he did not want to vote on a code of ethics without a full board.

A code of ethics policy has been under review since the board first decided it needed an ethics policy in a May meeting. However, then, they felt they needed more time to review the document.

In the May meeting, Board Member Randy Bell made a motion to implement ethics guidelines for the BOA saying,

“No board member should directly or indirectly try to influence the value of any individual parcel except during a regularly scheduled meeting of the full board.”

According to Bell, this would prevent any “behind the scenes” manipulation of property values.

Bell’s motion later died, however, due to a lack of a second. Afterwards, Porter made a motion to implement an ethics policy already in hand. This motion also died after Bell and Williams said they would like to have more time to review the document. Also in the meeting, Bell called a property assessment involving Porter himself “unethical”. For more on this story, please read FYN’s past BOA May meeting article here.

In the meeting on Thursday, however, Porter seemed to agree that an ethics policy for board members needed to be implemented, choosing to discuss the policy even though he said he did not want the board to vote on the policy at the time.

“The bottom line of this is that if a board member participates in the operation of the office then that parcel or parcels becomes a separate stand-alone voting item and not buried in the mass changes,”

said Porter. Porter also said hopefully that individuals, for good and valid reasons such as providing input to the staff, would then abstain from voting on a decision having anything to do with the decision.

After stating the policy’s main objective, Porter asked if there were any other comments or thoughts on the new document.

Bell, looking at the document said,

“Policy number two bothers me.”

According to Bell, policy number two says,

“No board member should divulge any decision made in executive session.”

After mentioning that the policy troubled him, Bell brought up a previous instance of a personal property decision occurring about a year ago in an executive session that had ended up on the front page of the local newspaper.

He explained that he asked a local reporter how the information had ended up on the front page of the paper. The reporter told him that current board member Jeff Holloway had told him the information,

“I just don’t want to get hung out for something in executive session,”

said Bell.

When asked by FYN on Friday what he meant by the statement in the meeting, Bell said he would like to see policy two of the code of ethics be eliminated all together. The reason for this he says is that if a board member reveals anything outside of executive session, he is then subject to being removed from the board. The conflict, Bell said , is that Gilmer County Commissioners will often ask what was said in the meeting, but the board can’t disclose anything that has been decided in executive session.

At this time, it is unclear whether or not the new suggestion will be considered for changes in the board’s new code of ethics. When asked if the new policy will be voted on at the next BOA meeting, Chief Appraiser Richard Lamb told FYN that it depended on whether or not there is a five person board at the time.

FYN will bring you more information about the BOA’s code of ethics policy as the story develops.