Amherst County won't adopt code of ethics

After months of debate, the Amherst County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted against adopting an ethics code at a work session Monday.

Since April the board has reviewed the four-page policy document as a possible guideline of conduct for local government officials.

On Monday, supervisors reiterated their concerns regarding the code’s language and purpose.

“I don’t see this document is going to cause us to adhere to anything we don’t already adhere to,” said Vice Chairman Chris Adams.

Several supervisors took specific issue with a portion of the code that requires board members contact staff only through the county administrator or a department head.

Supervisor Ray Vandall said he thought the focus of the ethics code was too wide and that parts of it centered on operational rather than ethical matters.

“It goes a lot farther than I ever anticipated,” he said. “I thought this was a matter for the Board of Supervisors, not every part of the county.”

Also at the work session Monday, the board voted to cease looking into a possible leak of confidential information in the police investigation of a former county employee.

Previously the board asked the Attorney General of Virginia to investigate the matter, but the office declined, stating that it would not “cannot supersede or interfere with investigations into local matters.”

The board had authorized a probe in June, following the resignation of former county administrator Rodney Taylor. Taylor said the board asked him to resign in April after he accused a supervisor of leaking confidential information to a private attorney.

Amherst’s commonwealth attorney Stephanie Maddox, who was present at the workshop session, said that the potential leak had no effect on the prosecution’s case of the former county employee.

Adams said that, in light of the remaining options, he did not see the need to continue with an investigation.

“We need to put this behind us. I think that will do us, as well as the county citizens, justice in the end.”

Supervisor Don Kidd agreed, saying he did not want to spend taxpayers’ money on a private investigation.

The board also discussed the potential impact the reduced level of state aid will have on the county’s 2010 budget.

The amount in reductions already totals $405,223, with a large bulk of those reductions affecting the commonwealth attorney’s office, the clerk’s office and the sheriff’s expense fund.

Adams stressed the importance of the county government working together to absorb the deficit in the county’s budget so that one department alone would not have to shoulder the burden.

The reductions affect the entire county and should be dealt with “systemically,” he said.

At Monday’s work session, the board scheduled a public hearing for Oct. 20 to discuss whether the county should take on responsibility for the Amherst train station-visitors center project, undertaken for the last 10 years by the Friends of the Historic Train Station.