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Calvert panel schedules public hearing after ethics commission outlines narrow removal process under new state law
Summary
The county ethics commission and legal counsel told commissioners House Bill 834 requires the county to make public any recommendation to expel a commissioner for conflict-of-interest findings and to adopt a process allowing removal after a contested hearing; the board voted to advertise a July 15 public hearing.
The Calvert County Ethics Commission presented a narrowly tailored draft ordinance to the Board of County Commissioners to implement House Bill 834, which the commission and legal counsel said requires (1) public disclosure of any ethics-commission recommendation to expel a county commissioner for conflicts of interest and (2) a local process by which the governing body may remove an elected official after a contested hearing.
Timothy Cox (chair of the county Ethics Commission) summarized the statutory mandate and said the proposed code change would apply only where an ethics-commission finding involves the county code’s conflict-of-interest provisions. "If the ethics commission makes a recommendation to expel a commissioner because of the finding of the conflict of interest, the Ethics Commission has to make that recommendation public," he told commissioners.
Attorney Todd Pounds, counsel to the ethics commission, described the procedure as a narrow, contested-case process governed by existing county contested-case rules and emphasized that the commission’s role is to review complaints and — if warranted — make a recommendation that the board may then consider in a formal hearing. Commissioners asked about scope, whether minor matters like traffic tickets could trigger the process and how many board votes would be required to proceed; counsel and the commission representatives said the threshold is limited to conflicts of interest defined in county code and that the board would follow its contested-case process.
Motion and next steps: Commissioner (move) made a motion to advertise a public hearing for July 15, 2025, to accept comments on the proposed ethics-code changes; the motion passed by voice vote. Staff were thanked for revising language to clarify the interplay between county code section 41-13 and state law.
Why it matters: The change is procedural and narrow in scope, but it establishes a local process for making and acting on ethics-commission recommendations in cases where the ethics code identifies a conflict of interest; the board will receive public input at the hearing before considering ordinance adoption.
