Skip to main content

State Ethics Commission's Ruling

 Date: Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 11:30 AM

Subject: Your Inquiry
To: Brunell, Catherine <cbrunell@natickps.org>

 

Ms. Brunell,

 

Per your request, I am writing to confirm the advice that I provided you over the phone regarding the conflict of interest law, G.L. c. 268A. 

 

You are a member of the Natick School Committee.  You advised that the School Committee is engaged in a comprehensive open space discussion.  One of the items coming before the School Committee in this regard involves the potential closure of the Johnson Elementary School.  The Johnson Elementary School is 0.3 miles from your house, and you have two children who are currently enrolled in the school.  The matter of the Johnson Elementary School appears to be intertwined for purposes of discussion and vote with the matter of the Memorial Elementary School.  For clarity, I will refer to these jointly as the Elementary School matters.  The School Committee is having a separate discussion and vote on High School matters. 

 

You inquired as to how the conflict of interest law would apply to you given the above facts. 

 

As we discussed, Section 19 of the conflict of interest law prohibits you from participating as a School Committee member in any particular matter in which you have a financial interest.  You have a presumed financial interest in the Elementary School matters given the proximity of your property to the Johnson Elementary School.  As such, you must recuse yourself from the Elementary School matters, including from any discussion and vote (and from acting on any emails sent to you as a School Committee member in this regard).  As a best practice, you should make a statement for the minutes stating that you are recusing yourself, and then leave the room while the matter is being addressed.  You may however speak from the audience as a member of the public as long as you do so only in your private capacity and only on behalf of yourself.  Note that, because the High School matters have been separated from the Elementary School matters, you may participate in the High School matters.  Additionally, if you obtain an independent real estate appraisal that concludes that the closure of the Johnson Elementary School would have no impact on your financial interests (e.g., would not affect the value of your property), then you may participate in the Elementary School matters as long as you have no other financial interest in the matter and file a Section 23(b)(3) disclosure with the Town Clerk.  If you obtain such an appraisal, you should contact me for further advice regarding whether you may have a financial interest given two of your children are enrolled in the Johnson Elementary School. 

 

I hope this advice has been helpful.  Let me know if you have any questions about this advice. 


                                     

                                     

State Ethics Commission

One Ashburton Place, Room 619

Boston, MA  02108





Popular posts from this blog

Statement on Recusal

Here are the remarks I gave last night when letting my committee know my decision to recuse:  After the School Committee meeting on October 15th, several individuals wrote into the SpeakUp Natick portal requesting that I recuse myself from voting on the possible closure of Johnson.  The substance of these messages, sent to the full committee, carried a familiar refrain. The messages - often using the same language – said some version of the following:  Catherine Brunell should recuse herself from deliberating and voting on the closure of Johnson because she lacks objectivity, as her children go to school there and she is from that neighborhood. I asked myself the question if there was any merit to the request for me to recuse myself and started to do some research about why people recuse  From what I can tell from the minutes, in Natick, It’s never happened before - not with the Kennedy, Wilson or the High School - not even for members whose children were to attend t...
Read more

Natick's Beloved Audit

The Natick Public Schools recently received the final report from the  Beloved Audit-  a resource made available to us in 2020 because of our participation in the METCO Program (THANK YOU METCO and ALL of the administrators who helped complete the audit!).  It was developed and run by  The Beloved Community .   Descriptions from the Report: What is it?   The Equity Audit is designed to provide comprehensive feedback on Natick Public Schools’ capacity for diversity, equity, and inclusion with all stakeholder groups. How was it developed:   A group of key leaders at Natick Public Schools spent hours completing this self-study and identifying relevant data sets for each area. The Equity Audit is designed with 14 sub-standards and 180+ indicators about nearly every facet of organizational work life. Some concrete suggestions that I read in the report: /Diversity - Ask questions like who is participating and why? / Inclusion - Some are bett...
Read more

School Committee Re-Org

Next week, you will see us working on the organization of the Natick School Committee! You elected us, now we elect and appoint one another.   We will select a chair and will determine the make up of the rest of the committee using or re-vising our policies. The Natick School Committee Policy Manual can be found here .  (See pages 43-45 for re-organization.)  The policy subcommittee met yesterday to consider revisions of the current policy including eliminating the Vice Chair of Finance position and allowing for an extension of the 2 year limit of the chair. The agenda from that meeting can be found  here .  The last major revision of this policy, discussed in April of 2020 , resulted in adding the Vice Chair of Finance to the committee.  What makes an effective board?   That's a question I've been asking others for months. Obviously there is no one answer, but here's a screen shot from a publication by the National School Board Association. ...
Read more