Thomas-Henry questions COIB on penalties and family enforcement

Suppose it does pass.

There are multiple penalties that a person violating the law could have assessed on them.

Have you guys looked at and do you feel these penalties seem sufficient given the potential of a policymaker to use prediction markets to enrich themselves based on the events they control?

Yeah, we have looked at the penalties that are in the proposed legislation.

I mean, they mirror the penalties that the board has in its normal enforcement context with a couple of, I think, important differences.

One of the differences is this would allow the board, if I'm reading it correctly, to remove a public servant from office.

That is not a power the board has ever had before, and we don't think it's a power the board should have.

We think that that's a power that should be reserved for the entity that is, in fact, employing that public servant.

The other distinction here is about the sort of scope of the enforcement, which is the board has never had the authority to engage in enforcement against people who are the family members.

of public servants before.

And we're honestly not sure what all the ramifications of that might be, but certainly when thinking about conflicts of interest,

it's about, which is sort of the core function of the board, we're thinking about people who have duties as public servants.

And so we're always sort of thinking about how the law applies in all respects, but maybe particularly in the enforcement respect with regard to where those public duties conflict with private interests.

So it's unfamiliar and maybe problematic territory for us to get into.

Engaging in administrative enforcement against the family members of public servants.

That being said, we also think that the confidentiality restrictions capture, you know, the use of confidential information or disclosure of confidential information by a public servant to a family member or, in the case of disclosure to anyone,

in a way that would capture that family member concern.

But the onus is on the public servant who actually has that public duty to maintain public trust, as you were describing as sort of one of the fundamental values underlying your proposed legislation and conflicts of interest law in the city.

So that's an incredibly important value.

We're a little concerned that maybe we've drifted beyond that when we get to

Actually engaging in enforcement against family members of public servants.

Gotcha.