I don't notice that we got it.

All right, let's do this.

Okay, everybody.

I know you are so excited for ethics training.

So I have got a fantastic presentation for you tonight to teach you all about ethics.

Let's get started.

So as council members, you all are giving a tremendous amount of your time and in your energy as you serve Draper.

And so the reason for ethics rules, there's they're sort of threefold.

They're gonna protect you personally from liability, from reputational harm, and from the unintended violations that could follow you beyond your time on the council.

Which that ultimately affects every program and service that we deliver.

So we have those in effect as well.

So I did a little research, and the good news for you is that there is high trust in state and local governments.

Now this is a national uh poll done by Gallup in September of last year, and it shows that a solid majority of Americans express trust in their state and local governments.

So right now we've got 59% of Americans trust their state government to handle state problems, and 65% trust local governments to handle local problems.

So you are the beneficiaries of the highest trust level by the public in government.

So if you look at these graphs here, you can see that they went back to the 70s, and it shows that the trust level in state government has gone down by 12 points since the 1970s.

But if you look at the graph for local governments, you can see that since the 1970s, it's it's maintained some stability in the trust level there.

So this is gonna be different to what you will see in federal government.

So according to two different ones, one by Gallup, one by the Pew Research Center, just back in last year, uh fall of and winter of last year, there's very low trust in the US federal government right now.

So we've got Americans' trust in various federal government.

This is all institutions, so this is all branches, um, remains at five decade lows.

17% of Americans say they trust government in Washington to do what is right just about always, only sorry, 2%, and then most of the time it's 15%.

So as you can see, trust in the federal government is low.

All right, so let's talk about ethics and define them.

It comes from the the English word is uh rooted in the ancient Greek word ethos, and it means character and personal disposition.

It's also a moral philosophy, and you can get into a lot of philosophical discussion on what is ethics.

Um, it's a discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad, morally right and wrong, and it's applied to any system or theory of moral values and principles.

But for purposes of our training, we are talking about moral principles that govern a person's behavior, and it's a code that establishes the minimum level that is expected in terms of conduct practiced by a person or group of people.

So we're gonna talk about both the state uh ethics, the municipal ethics um ethics law for the officers and employees, and also the draper ethics code as well.

All right, so I just found a fun quote there by a civil rights activist, James Baldwin.

I often describe ethics as a bridge on one side is power and on the other is trust.

If that bridge breaks, people may see government as powerful but not fair.

With ethics through transparency, accountability, integrity.

We reconnect the two.

You will see in the language of these statutes that public trust is a high concern and one of the sort of basic premises of why we have ethics laws.

Okay, we just talked about this.

This is the applicable laws that are going to govern you, the municipal officers and employees act in 103.

We've got the Utah Public Officers and Employees Act.

We won't go into that one as much, and then we've got the Draper City Municipal Code as well.

All right.

So just as a quick overview, our ethics laws aim to prevent conflicts of interest.

They ensure the public trust by prohibiting officials from using the position for personal economic gain.

And the core prohibited actions in these laws, you'll see it prevents self-dealing, accepting improper gifts, misusing confidential information, and participating in track transactions where you have a private financial interest.

So those are kind of the core issues that you're gonna see covered in ethics laws.

Let's talk about the purpose.

Um, usually I take a look at the statute just to see how the legislature and um how the statute itself has been drafted.

So the purpose for the state law, this one here is um it's to establish standards of conduct for municipal officers and employees to require these persons to disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest between their public duties and their personal interests.

So there's the purpose for the state law.

Now, the Draper code is quite a bit more extensive than the state law is, and perhaps that is partly why you see a higher level in local governments as opposed to state governments, because our code is more restrictive than the state law is.

So we won't go into like word by word on the goals for Draper City, but you can see that they have they're just there's a lot more verbiage here, and so it talks about how there needs to be a proactive approach in strengthening the emphasis on ethics and in guiding city elected officials and employees in upholding them.

And essentially, as you go down to the bottom of this here of part A of our code, it talks about how we want your disclosures to be made publicly and regularly.

So there's a goal for Draper.

Now, under B, we've got additional goals here, and I just kind of highlighted the main points of these.

If you look at the specific specific goals, so the code wants a comprehensive approach to ethics.

It wants to promote public confidence in you as officials.

It wants to ensure your compliance with local, state, and federal laws.

It wants to centralize the laws and regulations that apply to us.

It wants to heighten your knowledge and understanding of the ethical principles and laws that are inherent in your obligations as officials.

It wants to establish a system to train you and to provide for periodic review, to enact an ethics officer system that will provide guidance and education to all city departments, and then to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

So there are some additional goals in our code.