PUBLIC DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
Explanations and Instructions for the Covered Officials
Legal Background:
The State of Maryland mandates municipalities such as the Town of Chesapeake Beach to have in place public ethics laws that are substantially equivalent to those that apply to State officials. Accordingly, the Town has enacted the Chesapeake Beach Public Ethics Ordinance, which is accessible through the Town’s website. The Ordinance is administered by the Town’s Ethics Commission, which consists of three residents of the Town appointed by the Mayor with the consent of the Town Council.
The Ordinance chiefly contains provisions relating to the avoidance of conflicts of interest. A further major subject is the public disclosure of facts or circumstances that might lead to such conflicts or other ethics related issues, which is required to be made by the Town’s elected officials (and candidates for elected office), as well as a number of its appointed officials. The appointed officials covered by this disclosure obligation are identified by the Town government from time to time, and a list of these persons is prepared by the Town Administrator and is updated at the beginning of each calendar year.
The covered officials’ required disclosures are made annually by way of a written Public Disclosure Statement on a form provided by the Town. This document package contains explanations and instructions as well as blank forms for the preparation of this Statement. (The forms will also be available for downloading from the Town’s website). The covered officials will deliver the completed Statement to the Town Clerk. The Town Clerk calls for submission of the Disclosure Statements after March 31 of each year, and the filing deadline is April 30. Once filed, a Disclosure Statement becomes a public document, so that the information it contains is available to anyone , subject only to the withholding of information that is protected by applicable confidentiality laws, and will be provided by the Clerk on request, An official’s failure to submit this Statement or providing incorrect or incomplete information is a violation of the Ethics Ordinance punishable thereunder.
Structure of the Disclosure Statement
The Disclosure Statement to be delivered to the Town Clerk consists of three parts:
1. The Declaration page (i.e. the first sheet of this document package), completed, signed and dated.
2. The List of Schedules (which is part of this document package), marked up to identify the Schedules that are applicable to the reporting official and those that are not applicable, initialed and dated. The Schedules are questionnaires designed to elicit information which may have a bearing on a public official’s compliance with relevant ethical requirements. Each Schedule deals with a specific subject matter and typically contains several detail questions. All the information to be disclosed by the Schedules is prescribed by the State of Maryland, not by the Town.
3. The applicable Schedules that are identified as such on the List of Schedules, completed, signed and dated. Usually most of the Schedules are applicable to only a few officials.
The Schedules themselves are part of this document package and will also be posted on the Town’s website or otherwise be made available to the officials prior to the filing period referred to above. The schedules are available in this online fillable form or in hard copy. It is the responsibility of each official who is subject to the disclosure requirement to download the Schedule(s) applicable to such official, or alternatively to request a copy from the Town. Under some circumstances (as noted on the relevant Schedules) more than one version of a particular Schedule must be completed.
Further Information
Terms defined in the Ordinance are used in the Schedules with the same meaning. For convenience, a number of terms with non-obvious meanings are: a Close Relative is any of the covered person’s parents, spouse, domestic partner, siblings, and children. Confidential Information is any information that is disclosed or made available or accessible to the covered person, regardless in whatever way or form, on condition of confidentiality or under circumstances clearly requiring confidentiality, unless such information enters the public domain without fault of the covered person. Earned Income means wages, salaries, bonuses, professional fees, tips, compensation that results from the covered person’s personal labor or services, strike benefits, long-term disability benefits received prior to the minimum retirement age, net earnings from self-employment or from a business by its owner or operator, and any other receipts of money that is deemed earned income under the Internal Revenue Code. Earned income does not include interest, dividends, retirement income, social security benefits, unemployment benefits, alimony, or child support. Some questions refer to entities “doing business with the Town”. This means providing goods or services to the Town or responding to requests for proposals or invitations to submit a bid to the Town. A list of entities that did business with the Town during the reporting period is attached at the end of this document package as Appendix A. The term “interest” refers to a legal or equitable ownership right that is held wholly or partly, individually or jointly, directly or indirectly, including one that is subject to an encumbrance or condition. Interest does not include an interest held as an agent or in an equivalent capacity, unless the agent also has an interest of its own in the object, an interest in a deposit in a financial institution, in an insurance or endowment policy, in an annuity contract, a trust fund, a pension or profit sharing or college savings plan qualified under the Internal Revenue Code, or a mutual fund that is publicly traded. An interest is attributable to a covered official if it is held by a close relative or if it is held through a business or other entity. For such situations, which are relatively rare, the State has issued detailed rules. Therefore, if a Statement discloses the existence of an interest attributable through an entity, the covered person will be contacted by a representative of the Town to explore whether such indirect holdings must be disclosed in detail under the applicable disclosure mandates issued by the State.