Flagler County School Board member Lauren Ramirez’s challenge of proposed restrictions on her private business not only prevailed today before the Florida Ethics Commission, which unanimously took her side, but spurred a request by the commission that the Florida Legislature rewrite the relevant portions of law to prevent similar conflict-of-interest restrictions in the future.
Ramirez all but won her challenge behind arguments to the Ethics Commission by her attorney, Theresa Pontieri, the Palm Coast City Council vice mayor.
They both appeared before the Commission in Tallahassee at an 80-minute hearing. A unanimous vote directed the commission staff attorneys to rewrite the proposed opinion they’d submitted. They’ll have to submit two separate opinions, one preserving findings that Ramirez was not disputing, and another reversing findings she had disputed.
The second opinion will go further in Ramirez’s favor than even she had asked, reflecting to what extent the commission was “troubled,” in one commissioner’s characterization, by the reach of the original proposal and the discouraging effect it may have on business people who choose to serve as elected officials.
“There’s a lot here that has some really, really big impact, if we take the opinion as it is,” Commissioner Jeremy Rodgers said. “It can become very, I would say, restrictive for anyone doing any type of public service, depending on how far you take that.”
Ramirez was elected to the school board last November. She is the founder and operator of Salus Medical Training, a company that offers CPR training, medical camps, phlebotomy certifications, babysitting certifications and related courses–in all, nine courses for adults, four for youths. Her client base is 70 percent adult. Of the 30 percent who are students, 59 percent take babysitting certification classes, and 90 percent are from out of the county.
Ramirez’s company had been a vendor with the Flagler County school district, earning almost $50,000 through that contract alone last year. She volunteered and marketed her company in schools, and sponsored a Future Problem Solvers team, including with clothing embroidered with her company logo.
Once Ramirez began to campaign for the board, she halted most of that. She continued volunteering, but without the marketing. She stopped her contractual relationship with the district. A few months after her election, she requested an ethics opinion on her role as a board member and as the owner of Salus Medical. To be on the safe side, she wanted to clarify any conflict of interest issues. The Ethics Commission provides for just such advisory opinions and invites officials to take advantage of them.
She asked four questions. Stephanie Elona Novenario, staff attorney for the Florida Commission on Ethics, drafted a proposed opinion addressing all four. The proposed opinion concluded that Ramirez could continue to volunteer in schools as long as she or her volunteers or employees did not market her company. She could not use the district’s electronic portal to market or solicit students, or have a contractual relationship with the district. Ramirez had no issue with any of those findings.
But the proposed opinion went on to state that based on current law, or at least the commission attorney’s interpretation of law, Ramirez’s company could not enroll any Flagler County school district students in any of her company’s courses, nor could Ramirez employ district employees, either as volunteers or as paid employees.
“There is nothing inherently unethical about a school board member running a private business,” Novenario said. “There is also nothing inherently unethical about a school board member volunteering in her district schools. But there are facts and circumstances that together could create a prohibited conflict pursuant to the code of ethics if a school board member who owns a private business volunteers in her district schools on behalf of that private business. The facts and circumstances here work together to create such a conflict of interest.”
Ramirez was willing to concede on the hiring of district employees. But she found the restriction on district students unjust. The commission agreed. “If a school board member owns a restaurant, are students not allowed to patronize that restaurant?” Commission Chair Ashley Lukis, a Tallahassee attorney, asked.
The commission also thought the restriction on employment and on sponsorships was overly broad and unnecessary.
“I understand the opinion. I don’t like it. It’s confusing,” Commissioner Paul Baine, a Tampa attorney, said. “If I were a school board volunteer, I would step down so I could continue to operate my business. I mean, it’s not that she’s even targeting tutorial activities for academic requirements in school. These are medical training. It has nothing to do with any course requirements in school. So, I’m troubled by the application.”
Baine was referring to the commission attorney’s application of the ethics law. “I’m not suggesting that your application is somehow logically erroneous,” he continued. “I just don’t like the practical effect of it, and then the practical effect seems to discourage people who could meaningfully volunteer as School Board Members from doing so.”
Pontieri detected discomfort among most of the commission members as they spoke before she got to the lectern. She addressed each commissioner’s remarks in turn, citing them by name.
Pontieri noted that Ramirez has zero interaction with students who enrol. But beyond that, she noted a flaw in the reasoning behind one of the proposed opinion’s examples: a teacher may not tutor a student for a fee if that student is in the teacher’s class. But the teacher may tutor any other student. For Ramirez, the proposed opinion reasoned, all students are under her purview.
“A teacher does not need to have a student in their class in order to exercise a purview over that student,” Pontieri said. “By virtue of the fact that the student is in that school and the teacher may be supervising them in some capacity, they have the ability to exercise some authority and control over that student. So to say in Ms. Ramirez’s position, because she technically has a purview over the entire district, none of these students can take her classes that are completely unrelated to the curriculum is just too far-reaching. We’re going too far, and to the Commission’s point, that would very much preclude a lot of people who are willing to serve on on not only school boards. Candidly, commissioners, I’m a city council member, vice mayor of the City of Palm Coast. It would preclude many public officials from being able to serve in some capacity, and also have private businesses in which they earn a living and put food on their table.”
Pontieri gave commissioners the legal backing, through precedent, to buck up their discomfort with the proposed opinion, if not existing law.
It was clear even as Pontieri continued to marshal arguments in Ramirez’s favor that the commissioners, already bothered by the proposed opinion, were ready to go further than just amend it or accept it in part, as they could have done.
“I do think that the statute itself is troubling and that we should really go back to the legislature and try to make the statute a little clearer than what it is today,” Commissioner Linda Stewart said, “because we’re going to be seeing these things, possibly, over and over again, case by case and we might be able to do a better job if we adjust the statute itself.”
“The opinion casts a wide net, and we need to take a scalpel approach,” Commissioner Jon Philipson said. “I agree with Commissioner Stewart that maybe it’s a legislative fix. But adopting this opinion would have a floodgate effect, and I think would inhibit people from wanting to do public service.”
The commission moved to have the whole proposed opinion scrapped and rewritten in two separate opinions, though Steven Zuilkowski, the deputy executive director of the commission and its general counsel, was a bit exasperated at not getting the clearest direction on all the questions. It’s still not clear for example, where the commission stands on a board member’s company logo appearing on students’ club shirts, or whether a board member may hire school district employees for his or her business, at least not by consensus. It appeared that the commission was willing to allow both.
The opinions will be submitted to the commission at a future meeting for review, leaving the matter technically pending for now.
Marchesa Negroni says
I am DISGUSTED by this. It’s outrageous that we have elected officials who seem more interested in lining their own pockets than doing a single thing to help the people they promised to serve.
Since they got into office, what have they actually done for our kids, our schools, or this city? Nothing!!! except look out for themselves and each other like besties. This conflict of interest is just the latest slap in the face to every taxpayer who believed their vote would make a difference.
We did not elect you to cash in on your positions. We elected you to work for us. If you can’t do that, then you don’t deserve to sit in those seats one more day. Flagler deserves leaders who put the people first….not themselves.
Thermal paper... says
Good prevails again for Good people.
Tabitha says
All of this effort is mischaracterize and tarnish Ms Ramirez was an awful waste of time.
Who is responsible for pushing this nonsense against her? Is it that group of passionately insane people who embarrass themselves at public meetings?
Mort says
GOOD JOB, Ladies!!
FlaglerLive says
Ms. Ramirez herself voluntarily sought an ethics opinion, as elected officials are entitled to do (and as too few do). No one is “pushing this” against her.