Thank you, staff and Committee members, for the hard work to draft strong policies as part of our mission to be the best HFC. It is very helpful to have these posted well in advance of our Board discussion on August 14th.
I want to encourage members of the F&A Committee along with any Directors who have prior experience with policies such as these to post comments and/or raise questions here for discussion prior to the Board meeting. This will allow staff time to respond and provide additional information/insight into the process they used to develop these policies.
I have one general comment on the Code of Conduct Policy, and one comment/Q about the Records Management Guidelines.
In the Code of Conduct Policy, I noticed that unlike the introductory sections of the other 2 policies, this introductory statement does not reference existing standards in place for other Texas entities such as ours as a source material for the draft policy.
Having seen no reference, I looked up Travis County Government standards and noticed that our draft policy does not entirely align with the one they have posted, and which can be freely adopted by agencies such as ours who operate under Boards appointed by the Travis County Commissioners Court. Would staff and/or Committee members share if TC's policy was discussed during the drafting of this policy. (e.g.) was a reason to include a higher limit on the monetary value of gifts that is considered acceptable. To be transparent, I want to disclose to staff and my colleagues that I worked under much lower limits and stricter guidelines for Federal Employees for decades and found that to be a helpful reminder of how to avoid even the appearance of currying favor or creating the risk of harboring an intrinsic bias. I am not objecting to the terms of this policy, I am asking for the above background information be provided.
In re: the Records Management Guidelines. I have one comment and a question. Since being appointed as a Director in 2022 I have frequently viewed the video recordings of past Board meetings kept in the archives. This has included video records of meetings held over 3 years prior to my appointment re: items coming up at Board meetings for the 2nd or 3rd time. Do staff or Committee members know of a reason to not retain these recordings for longer than 'Close of fiscal year + 2 yrs.'?
To be clear, I do not wish to convey a lack of support for the draft policies, I want to invite discussion on this forum where all can participate.
