Jackson City committees recommend ordinance changes to allow anonymous employee ethics reports and tighten definitions

Jackson Cityaudit and ethics committee members agreed on a package of recommended changes to the cityethics ordinance and on a parallel plan to explore anonymous reporting tools for employees, the joint meeting concluded Thursday.

The committees voted to recommend that the City Council amend the ordinanceto expand the definition of personal interest to include grandparents, grandchildren and domestic partners, and to insert the word "official" in two places so the ordinance applies to official past actions. Members also approved a recommendation to identify a third-party vendor to receive anonymous initial ethics complaints from employees, with the city attorney asked to review open-records implications.

Committee members said the changes are intended to close gaps they identified while reviewing the ordinance and to give employees a safer path to report potential ethics issues. "The ordinance says it's currently written, there's no provision for that," said Christy Cruzen, who presented the committeefindings and led the review, referring to the lack of an anonymity option for employees.

Why it matters: Committee members said employees sometimes fear retaliation and therefore may not report misconduct. The changes would be advisory to the City Council; any change to permit anonymous ethics complaints would also require amending the ordinance and legal review because records created during any investigation can be subject to Tennessee open-records law.

Most important facts - The audit committee formally moved and the group approved a recommendation that the City Council expand the ordinancedefinition of personal interest to add…