One section of the 2010 Pensacola City Charter that has made some reluctant to run for mayor is Article IV, Section 4.01(a)(14), which states the mayor is “to devote his or her entire work time to the performance of the duties of the Mayor’s office, and hold no other elected public office while Mayor.”
Most have interpreted that to mean the mayor must give up any outside business interest or employment. However, Mayor Ashton Hayward quietly got a legal opinion three years ago that stated that isn’t necessarily the case.
In an opinion letter sent to Mayor Hayward’s residence, attorney Mark Herron of the Tallahassee law firm Messer Caparello said that there is no definition in the Pensacola City Charter as to what constitutes “full-time capacity” or “entire work time.”
He wrote, “Nor is there any single legal definition for ‘full-time work.'”
The attorney concluded that since the City of Pensacola Employee Handbook provides all employees are to work a 40-hour week that begins on Sunday midnight “with work scheduled during regular office hours of City Hall” that it is “reasonable to conclude from the language of the Pensacola City Charter that it does not explicitly prohibit all employment outside limits prescribed by the Charter.”
Herron argued that if the framers of the Charter intended to prohibit any other work they would have used similar language that prohibits the mayor holding any other elective office, such as “and hold no other elected public office or employment while Mayor.”
“In my opinion, these restrictions do not prohibit or restrict your ability to purchase, lease, invest in, own, develop, or sell real property; or to purchase, lease, invest in, own, develop, or sell tangible or intangible real or personal property. Nor do these restrictions limit your ability to apply for and hold any business or professional license. These restrictions, in my opinion. likewise do not per se prohibit your ownership of business entities that engage in such activities.”
The attorney recommended that the mayor obtain a declaratory judgment from the courts to definitively clarify the nature and extent of any limitations imposed by the Charter.
Mayor Hayward did not share this opinion letter with the public or Pensacola City Council, even though the taxpayers paid the legal bill, $1,170, for it. The opinion letter was not published on the city’s Transparent Pensacola web page.
The opinion letter might have encouraged others to run for the mayor in 2014 had the prospective candidates known the restrictions weren’t has firm as previously believed.
Mayor Hayward did not seek a declaratory judgment to further validate the legal opinion. Read mayor_ethics.
Inweekly paid $150.56 for the letter and other documentation regarding Messer Caparello and the Tallahassee-based private investigation firm GPI Agency. We waited 27 days for the City of Pensacola Sunshine Center to release the information.
