| Advisory opinion request from Natchitoches Parish Planning and Zoning Department (Department) employee Melonia McDaniel regarding whether the Code of Governmental Ethics (Code) prohibits her brother, Ivan McDaniel, from serving on the Natchitoches Parish Planning and Zoning Commission. (Commission) |
|
|
Ms. McDaniel stated that she has been employed as an administrative assistant with the Department for a year and three months. Her job duties include gathering exhibits for the Commission meetings and reading them out loud at the Commission meetings. She is not a member of the Commission. She stated that to become a member of the commission one would turn in an application to serve on the Commission to the Parish President and, if he approved, he would place that application on the agenda for the Parish Council to vote to approve the appointment.
|
|
La. R.S. 42:1119A provides that no member of the immediate family of an agency head shall be employed in his agency.
La. R.S. 42:1119C(2) provides a limited exception to the general nepotism prohibition and allows the continued employment and normal promotional advancement of a public employee when a member of the public employee's immediate family becomes the agency head of the public employee's agency, provided that such public employee has been employed in the agency for a period of at least one year prior to the member of the public employee's immediate family becoming the agency head.
La. R.S. 42:1102(2)(a)(i) defines "agency" to mean a department, office, division, agency, commission, board, committee, or other organizational unit of a governmental entity.
La. R.S. 42:1102(3) defines "agency head" to mean the chief executive or administrative officer of an agency or any member of a board or commission who exercises supervision over the agency.
La. R.S. 42:1102(13) defines "immediate family" as the term relates to a public servant means his children, the spouses of his children, his brothers and their spouses, his sisters and their spouses, his parents, his spouse, and the parents of his spouse.
|
|
|
Adopt draft advisory opinion.
|
|
| Assigned Attorney: |
Suzanne Mooney |
|
|