This Advisory Opinion concerns the following issue as formulated from facts and/or circumstances furnished by a requestor. The Commission approved this opinion on April 5, 1996, basing its approval solely on the facts and circumstances stated herein.

May a state employee serve a political party as an executive board member, secretary to the executive board, as a delegate to the county, congressional district and state conventions and as vice-chair of the county's women's organization affiliated with the political party?

    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 entities' internal rules and regulations.

    The questions of whether there are any state statutes other than the conflict of interest laws that might prohibit your service in the political party and/or any federal prohibitions to your serving in the political party because of federal funding to your state agency are areas that are outside the Commission's jurisdiction. Therefore, the Commission suggests that you present this issue to the State Attorney General's Office and to the appropriate federal agency or agencies.

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

Code Section 25-4-103(g)(i)(ii)(iii)(iv)(v), (h), and (p)(i)(ii)(iii) states:

"(g) 'Governmental' means the state and all political entities thereof, both collectively and separately, including but not limited to:

(i) Counties;

(ii) Municipalities;

(iii) All school districts;

(iv) Ml courts; and

(v) Any department, agency, board, commission, institution, instrumentality, or legislative or administrative body of the state, counties or municipalities created by statute, ordinance or executive order including all units that expend public funds.

(h) 'Governmental entity' means the state, a county, a municipality or any other separate political subdivision authorized by law to exercise a part of the sovereign power of the state.

(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."

    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 a frill-time employee with a state agency, working as an Accountant/Auditor in the Community Services Division of a public facility. I am not a grant employee and my salary does not come from any federal funds.

As an executive board member of one of the County's political parties, I have been nominated to serve in the following elected and/or appointed positions:

1. Secretary to Executive Board;

2. County, Congressional District and State Convention delegate and qualified to serve as national if elected to do so; and

3. Vice Chair of the County's women's organization affiliated with the political party.

This is all volunteer work with no compensation whatsoever. This work is done on my personal time and does not or will not interfere with my job as a state worker. I have discussed this with my agency director and he has no problem with me doing this volunteer work but did say I need something in writing from the Ethics Commission. A friend checked with your office and my understanding was there is no state statute against this but might be a problem if I was compensated by any Federal funds such as grants etc. I work with grants and write grants but am not on any of the grants.

I enjoy this volunteer work very much but certainly do not want to do anything that would be considered unethical that would harm me or the agency.

I appreciate your help and written response.

    Based solely on the facts and circumstances presented by the requestor, the Commission's opinion is that the state conflict of interest laws do not prohibit the requestor from serving a political party in the positions set forth in the above letter of request.
 
 

Ronald E. Crowe Executive Director