Applicant skewers Ethics Committee

Looks like six folks (unless I miscounted) interviewed with the Knox County Commission for the open seat on the the county's Ethics Committee today. Another 14 didn't show up.

One person, Diane Jablonski, skewered the committee.

She said she was withdrawing her application yet appeared before the commission because she “felt this was the only way that would be able to publicly air my disgust with the fiasco perpetrated on the public by the so-called Ethics Committee.”

She noted that the board “operated within their own rules,” but there is “something un-ethical about a committee, who deals with the public trust, appointing themselves to full terms of office.”

Let me interject here. Last week the board gave 20 or so applicants each two minutes to say why they should be picked for he two open spots. Two of those applicants were board members whose terms were expiring. The board nominated the two members and then promptly reappointed them. This hasn't gone over well with some folks. Today's selection is to fill a partial term. The commission – not the committee – is to make this appointment.

OK, back to Jablonski:

“(What) happened was a sham, a farce and a fraud perpetrated on the citizens who had applied,” she said. “This self-appointed Ethics Committee, in my opinion, did a great disservice to Knox County and to the citizens who had appeared before them, in good faith, believing that they would be given fair consideration. What happened has unfortunately become the norm in Knox County where ethics is paper thin.”

She noted that educators, attorneys, mediators and “many of whom had served on ethics committees within their own professions applied.

Anyhoo, enough of that. Got more meetings to cover. I should note that no one, including Jablonski, has complained to me about the actual selections that were made, but rather the process.