Ethics Commission aims to clarify rule on teacher gifts
The Alabama Ethics Commission wants to make this clear: Alabama's ethics law aims to stop public corruption, not Christmas gifts for teachers.
The commission Wednesday gave preliminary approval to an opinion revising a 2011 decision that said the state’s ethics law banned all public employees – including teachers – from accepting a “thing of value” unless it was under $25. The new opinion says the “clear terms” of the law “apply only to the relationship between lobbyist, subordinates of lobbyists, principals and public employees/officials and their families.”
A 60-day public comment period will take place. The commission will take a final vote on the opinion on Dec. 7, amidst the holiday season.
The ruling stresses that employees need to exercise "proper judgment" and that bans on gifts to lobbyists and those who hire them remain violations of the law. It also preserves a $25 “de minimis” where any gift less than that value given to a public employee is not considered violating the law – a “safe harbor” in the words of the ruling.
But it also stresses that the context of the gift-giving matters. A holiday gift to a teacher worth more than $25, for example, would not in itself break the law, unless the gift aimed to improperly influence action, such as a grade a student receives.
“What it does is it makes the facts important,” Tom Albritton, executive director of the Alabama Ethics Commission, said in an interview after the meeting Wednesday.
Teachers are public employees who fall under the ethics law. In 2011, the commission ruled that certain gifts, like hams, turkeys and gift cards, would not fall under a “de minimis” exception, which created concerns from parents and teachers.
Albritton said he did not know if there had ever been a complaint about teachers receiving gifts. “We certainly get a lot of questions about it,” he said.
The opinion notes criticism that the law and its interpretation “punishes a group of public employees in a way not contemplated at passage” and stresses that the de minimis exception applies.
The commission does say that teachers cannot ask for gifts from students or their parents, or initiate the idea of gift giving, “which would be a use of official position for personal gain.” But the opinion states that “in the context of teacher gifts, most relationships will likely fall outside” the relevant part of the law.
The director said the issue was complicated, and said the opinion could not anticipate all possibilities that could emerge. The ruling, for instance, notes that school support staff are “in a different position relative to the student” than teachers, principals and guidance counselors. The law would still appear to ban lobbyists from giving gifts to their children’s teachers.
The opinion encourages local school boards to develop formal policies dealing with the issue.
Albritton also stressed the policy did not amount to a “carve out” for teachers.
“We can’t carve out groups of public employees, nor do we want to,” he said. “I’m afraid you would have special interests on behalf of groups working to carve their groups out, and soon you would have an arbitrary application of the act.”
At the same time, Albritton said they wanted to “refocus” attention on the purpose of the law.
“The point is to say that there are groups of people who are simply not covered by the act,” he said. “There are transactions not covered by the act. But there is certain conduct specifically addressed in the act that we should be specifically concerned about, and that is the prevention of public corruption."