{"id":6301,"date":"2025-10-15T17:31:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T17:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/6301\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T17:31:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T17:31:06","slug":"oakland-county-commissioners-to-consider-event-sponsorship-requests-the-oakland-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/6301\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland County commissioners to consider event sponsorship requests \u2013 The Oakland Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Oakland County\u2019s board of commissioners meet Thursday evening<\/a>, the agenda will include event-sponsorship requests, union contracts and grant applications among other items.<\/p>\n

What the agenda doesn\u2019t include, as of early Wednesday afternoon, are resolutions to update the county\u2019s ethics rules and establish financial disclosure rules as well as whistleblower protections.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month<\/a>, County Executive Dave Coulter issued statements calling for ethics and financial-disclosure reforms for county officials and the creation of an ombudsperson to address related concerns and complaints.<\/p>\n

So far this year, there have been ethical issues involving a county road commissioner found at fault for breaking workplace rules, an information technology staffing contract canceled over conflict-of-interest concerns involving a company created by a current county employee, and questions about whether County Commission Chairman Dave Woodward\u2019s private business contracts and whether his lobbying efforts on behalf of the Sheetz convenience stories conflicted with his board position.<\/p>\n

Two commissioners, Kristen Nelson, a Waterford Township Democrat, and Charlie Cavell, a Ferndale Democrat, have made repeated attempts to update the existing ethics guidelines, add protections for whistleblowers and institute financial-disclosure rules for county officials.<\/p>\n

They introduced three resolutions in May<\/a>, which the board referred to committees for review. Since then, Woodward said they were also being reviewed by the county\u2019s legal team. Cavell and Nelson later brought the resolutions to the board bypassing the committee process but each failed to pass.<\/p>\n

If the proposed ethics policy is adopted, elected and county officials would be required to disclose:<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Earnings outside of their county roles and above a certain threshold.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Positions with businesses, nonprofits or other organizations.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Any gifts, travel costs or other reimbursements by organizations doing business with the county.<\/p>\n

Spouses would also have to disclose any interests that could create a conflict with county business, according to the proposed policy.<\/p>\n

The proposed financial-disclosure policy calls for training on what must be disclosed and penalties for violating the rules that include:<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Public reprimands<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Ineligibility for appointment to county boards<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 Referral to the appropriate ethics or legal authority<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether the commissioners will consider the existing proposed policies or updated versions.<\/p>\n

The commissioners meet for Democrat and Republican caucuses at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16. These are not publicly livestreamed but are open to the public. These are followed by the commissioners meeting at 6 p.m. in the commission\u2019s auditorium, 1200 N. Telegraph Road in Pontiac, which is livestreamed on YouTube at https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@OakGovBOC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The meeting agenda and packet are online at https:\/\/oaklandcomi.portal.civicclerk.com\/event\/1301\/files<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Oakland County\u2019s board of commissioners meet Thursday evening, the agenda will include event-sponsorship requests, union contracts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[6742,6746,6739,6740,6743,6744,6741,143,904,6738,145,144,6745],"class_list":["post-6301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-charlie-cavell","tag-conflict-of-interest","tag-dave-coulter","tag-dave-woodward","tag-ethics","tag-financial-disclosure","tag-kristen-nelson","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-county","tag-oakland-county-commission","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-whistleblower-protections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}