Advisory Opinion No. 2007-38 Advisory Opinion No. 2007-38 Re: Marsha E. Crecelius QUESTION PRESENTED The petitioner, the Senior Appraiser for the State of Rhode Island Department of Administration, Office of Municipal Affairs, requests an advisory opinion as to whether she may accept private employment in the form of a part-time job as a data collector for Clipboard, Inc., a property reevaluation company. RESPONSE It is the opinion of the Rhode Island Ethics Commission that the petitioner, the Senior Appraiser for the State of Rhode Island Department of Administration, Office of Municipal Affairs, may accept private employment in the form of a part-time job as a data collector for Clipboard, Inc., a property reevaluation company, without violating the Code of Ethics. The petitioner describes her duties at the Rhode Island Office of Municipal Affairs as follows: Her office reviews the property sales in each of the 39 Rhode Island cities and towns and compares these sales to each property's assessed value. Information regarding sales and assessed values comes from the statewide municipal tax assessors several times each year. The petitioner inputs this data into a database and prepares reports and studies of the ratios between actual sale prices and assessed values. This information is then transmitted to the Rhode Island Department of Education for use in determining the amount of state aid to education that each municipality receives. The petitioner's official duties also include the preparation of publications detailing and describing each municipality’s tax rates, property tax exemptions, and other items. The petitioner represents that, as part of her public duties, she has no involvement whatsoever in appraising or assessing property in any of the municipalities. While the Department of Administration is statutorily charged under R.I. Gen. Laws § 44-5-11.1(a) with certifying all “persons, firms, associations, partnerships, and corporations engaged in the business of revaluing property for any town or city,” the petitioner represents that as Senior Appraiser, she takes no part in this process, but rather, this responsibility is taken on solely by her department supervisor. The only tasks that she completes in her public role in this process are strictly ministerial in nature, i.e., handing over paperwork or lists to her supervisor. The petitioner further represents that, in fact, there are only a handful of companies in the state certified to perform revaluations, that these companies are routinely recertified annually, and that she has never witnessed any problematic issues occur in this process. However, the petitioner represents that if the Office of Municipal Affairs did ever challenge the recertification of Clipboard, Inc. as a revaluation company, she would recuse from the process, including the ministerial portions. Petitioner represents that as a part-time employee of Clipboard, Inc., she would function as a data-collector by going out to properties in Bristol, Rhode Island, and collecting standard data from residential and commercial properties needed to complete a revaluation process. This data includes such items as the number of rooms in a house, square footage of living space, and other details needed in order to determine a property’s value. The petitioner represents that in this part-time work, she would have no financial, advisement, or decision-making authority; rather, she would essentially be a walking data-collector, turning over gathered information to Clipboard, Inc., who would then process the information and turn it over to the municipal tax assessor, who verifies its accuracy. The Code of Ethics provides that a public employee should not have any interest or engage in any business, employment or transaction, which is in substantial conflict with the proper discharge of her employment in the public interest (R.I. Gen. Laws § 36-14-5(a)) nor enter into any employment which will impair her independence of judgment as to her official duties (R.I. Gen. Laws § 36-14-5(b)), nor obtain financial gain for herself, a business associate, or employer, other than that provided by law. R.I. Gen. Laws § 36-14-5(d). The Code also prohibits the petitioner from representing herself or any other person before any state agency by which she is employed. R.I. Gen. Laws § 36-14-5(e)(1)-(2). Furthermore, a public official must recuse herself from participating in a matter in which her business associate appears before the state agency by which she is employed. R.I. Gen. Laws § 36-14-5(f). In previous advisory opinions, the Commission has given its approval to public employees to accept outside employment provided that: (1) the public employee’s official duties did not directly relate to his private employment, (2) the public employee completed such work outside of his normal working hours, and (3) the public employee did not appear before his own agency. See A.O. 2005-52 (opining that a part-time Town Planner for the Town of Exeter was not prohibited by the Code of Ethics from accepting part-time work as a consultant on two projects for the Exeter Town Council and Planning Board); A.O. 2005-15 (opining that the Principal Civil Engineer for the Department of Environmental Management (“DEM”) was not prohibited by the Code of Ethics from accepting part-time employment with a private firm that submits work to the DEM); A.O. 2004-24 (opining that a member of the City of Cranston Fire Department and Assistant Deputy State Fire Marshal was not prohibited by the Code of Ethics from providing consulting services relating to fire safety and code compliance outside of Cranston). Here, the petitioner represents that while her part-time work would have some nexus with her official duties, in that the data she would collect for Clipboard, Inc. would be transmitted to the Office of Municipal Affairs pending the municipal tax assessor’s verification, her public work effectively involves the mere data entry and database maintenance of the information. Essentially, the petitioner represents that while both her public and private work would involve handling the same data, she has no discretion in her position as Senior Appraiser as to how to process the data, and thus no substantial conflict of interest exists under R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 36-14-5(a) and 7(a), nor can her judgment be impaired as to her official duties under R.I. Gen. Laws § 36-14-5(b), as her work with the data is non-discretionary in nature. The petitioner further represents that she would complete the work in her private employment on her own time without public resources, and that she would not appear before any division of the Office of Municipal Affairs regarding this work. Given the petitioner’s representations, the Commission opines that if the petitioner adheres to her representations, including her assertion that she will recuse from any matters, other than the ministerial handling of paperwork, involving Clipboard, Inc. that should come before the Office of Municipal Affairs, she may accept work as a part-time data collector for Clipboard, Inc. Code Citations : 36-14-5(a) 36-14-5(b) 36-14-5(d) 36-14-5(e)(1)-(2) 36-14-5(f) 36-14-7(a) Related Advisory Opinions : 2005-52 2005-15 2004-24 Keywords : Private Employment