This Advisory Opinion concerns the following issue as formulated from facts and/or circumstances furnished by a requestor. The Commission approved this opinion on October 7, 2005, basing its approval solely on the facts and circumstances stated herein.
 

May a former city council member be employed by a private, non-profit organization which formerly held contracts with the city which were authorized by the city council during the former city council member’s term of office?

State law restricts the Mississippi Ethics Commission to interpreting and issuing opinions on Sections 25-4-101 through 25-4-119, 1972 Mississippi Code Annotated and Article IV, Section 109, Mississippi Constitution of 1890.  Therefore, this opinion does not address the Mississippi laws outside the Commission’s jurisdiction nor the governmental entity’s internal rules and regulations.

The pertinent conflict of interest laws to be considered here are:

Constitutional Section 109 states:
 

“No public officer or member of the legislature shall be interested, directly or indirectly, in any contract with the state, or any district, county, city, or town thereof, authorized by any law passed or order made by any board of which he may be or may have been a member, during the term for which he shall have been chosen, or within one year after the expiration of such term.”

Code Section 25-4-103(f)(i)(ii) and (p)(i)(ii)(iii) states:
 

“(f) ‘Contract’ means:

(i) Any agreement to which the government is a party; or

(ii) Any agreement on behalf of the government which involves the payment of public funds.

(p) ‘Public servant’ means:

(i) Any elected or appointed official of the government;

(ii) Any officer, director, commissioner, supervisor, chief,  head, agent or employee of the government or any agency thereof, or of any public entity created by or under the laws of the State of Mississippi or created by an agency or governmental entity thereof, any of which is funded by public funds or which expends, authorizes or recommends the use of public funds; or

(iii) Any individual who receives a salary, per diem or expenses paid in whole or in part out of funds authorized to be expended by the government.”

Code Section 25-4-105(2) states:
 

“(2) No public servant shall be interested, directly or indirectly, during the term for which he shall have been chosen, or within one (1) year after the expiration of such term, in any contract with the state, or any district, county, city or town thereof, authorized by any law passed or order made by any board of which he may be or may have been a member.”

Pertinent facts and circumstances provided by the requestor, absent identifying data, are set forth as follows and considered a part of this opinion.
 

I am respectfully requesting that the Commission reconsider the Advisory Opinion 05-066-E dated July 25, 2006 on the basis that the City has since terminated its contractual agreement with the Community Action Agency as of June of 2005, of which all payments to this agency has ceased and desisted.  At the time that I submitted this request (i.e., June 21, 2005), I was unaware that such termination between these two entities had taken place.

On the mercy of this Commission and as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the limited amount of employment, I implore this commission to look favorably and advise whether I am allowed to be employed under this new information or other facts and circumstances vis-à-vis all applicable laws of the State of Mississippi.

Based solely on the facts and circumstances presented by the requestor, the Commission’s opinion is as follows.

The prior opinion was based upon the existence of contracts between the city and a private, non-profit organization which were authorized by the city council. Those contracts were unrelated to the project on which the requestor wished to work, but the payments made under those contracts, nevertheless, funded the non-profit organization with which the requestor sought employment, thus prohibiting that employment within one year of the requestor’s departure from the city council. That finding was made pursuant to Section 109, Miss. Const. of 1890, and Section 25-4-105(2), Miss. Code of 1972, quoted above.

Clearly, the central fact upon which the prior opinion was based has changed. With the termination of the contracts and payments, the source of the conflict is removed, and the requestor’s employment with the private, non-profit organization is no longer prohibited.
 

Scott Rankin
Executive Director