During their regularly scheduled Wednesday evening meeting, the Carbon County Commissioner tackled the rotation of the commission chair, which is conducted once every six months.
Previously, the commission chair was Casey Hopes, who was excused from attending the meeting due to being on a flight for a special event. However, county attorney Christian Bryner pointed out that many items still listed commissioner Hopes as chair, which may cause issues if the chair was rotated to Commissioner Larry Jensen prematurely.
Due to this, the commissioners and Bryner decided that the rotation of commission chair to commissioner Larry Jensen would become effective on July 1.
The commissioners and Bryner also discussed the approval of Ordinance 517. Bryner explained that, during the last legislative session, House Bill 163 was passed. This bill makes personal use of public property and public monies a felony unless that personal use is otherwise authorized by the county through an ordinance. This ordinance is intended to be a direct response that states personal use of an incidental nature or subtle nature is authorized by the county.
Ordinance 517 provides that county employees can use personal property to which they are assigned to not disrupt the primary purpose of the reports and will not hinder any other county function or those trying to perform their jobs.
This allows employees to use public property as long as it does not incur any additional costs to the county and is conducted during non-working hours. The ordinance does not allow any use of public monies and the use of the property may not be commercial or to obtain revenue or profit of any kind.
Bryner stated that there has been set forth a number of examples such as county issued cell phones to speak to family members, county issued automobiles can be used to drop off family members or children on the way to work and similar situations. He also informed the commissioners that they are supposed to have the ordinance in place by July 1.
Furthermore, he explained that the county has always had a policy that states county property is not to be used for personal or other business use. Use of that nature has already been discouraged; the ordinance simply clarifies. The commissioners agreed to adopt the ordinance.