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| Corrections chief must draw clear line |
| By theolympian.com |
| Published: 09/20/2011 |
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At the state Department of Corrections there must be a clear line between work responsibilities and volunteer opportunities. State work should be done on state hours and volunteer activities must be performed off the clock. Unfortunately, for Belinda Stewart, the line was blurred. An independent panel has concluded that the agency’s communications director broke ethics laws by doing work for nonprofits on the state’s dime. There should have been no link between Stewart’s volunteer activities on behalf of three nonprofit organizations and her work as the spokeswoman for the agency. Her volunteer activities should have been performed from home and outside the workday, not combined with her state responsibilities. Her bosses didn’t help matters any by facilitating and encouraging Stewart’s nonprofit work. The state Executive Ethics Board recently voted 3-0 to declare there is “reasonable cause” to believe ethics violations were committed that warrant a fine of more than $500, a threshold for the board. Investigators will now seek a response from Stewart to their 26-page report, and will schedule a hearing in her case. State Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood, sent a letter to Corrections Secretary Bernie Warner after the vote asking him to fire Stewart. “I would hope that he would be using this as a reason to clean house,” said Carrell, who filed one of three ethics complaints against Stewart. “This didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was condoned by people up the food chain.” The newly released report said Stewart “may have violated ethics laws when she used state resources including her time, her staff’s time, state computers, state vehicles and the state electronic mail system far in excess of the de minimis (negligible) use rule to further the agenda of” nonprofits. Stewart was involved with three nonprofits: the National Association of Women in Criminal Justice; the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice and the Washington Corrections Association. Justifying her volunteer work, Stewart said, “It helps connect the agency with the community. That networking helps to develop staff. Everything that I have done, I have felt like I was doing the work of the agency.” Read More. |
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