Filing your 2008 Disclosure of Interest Statement

For elected county officials, the 2008 Disclosure of Interest Statement is due January 31, 2008.

This is the disclosure statement that was formerly filed with your local county election commission office. After the passage of the Comprehensive Governmental Ethics Reform Act of 2006, the form is now filed with the State Ethics Commission. You should have filed a disclosure statement with that office in January 2007.

This year, the Ethics Commission is requiring that the statement be filed electronically. According to the Ethics Commission website, county elected officials should have received an authorization number in the mail which will permit filers to access the system starting on Monday, January 7, 2008. Filers will be required to sign in on the Conflicts portal, establish a TN.gov account with their authorization number and complete the Disclosure of Interest Statement. The Ethics Commission is indicating that it will no longer be accepting paper Statements. The Ethics Commission also has posted a schedule of statewide training seminars to instruct you on how to file your statement electronically. It appears there will be 17 training seminars taught across the state during January, so you should be able to find one near you. You can find that schedule of times and locations here: http://state.tn.us/sos/tec/TrainingClasses.pdf

The primary Ethics Commission Website is here: http://state.tn.us/sos/tec/

If you are reading this information here, you probably will not have substantial difficulty using their websites or filing electronically. Many of your fellow commissioners will not have it as easy. There are still many county commissioners who do not have e-mail or internet access. If you or one of your fellow commissioners has concerns about this requirement for electronic filing, please let me know ASAP. The Ethics Commission will meet on Jan. 15th and there may be a chance to present these concerns to the Ethics Commission at that time.