BERLIN – The Berlin Ethics Commission voted unanimously to approve the latest financial disclosures submitted by the town’s elected officials.
In a brief meeting Monday, the three-member commission expressed no concerns regarding the financial disclosure forms submitted by the mayor and the town’s council members. Chairman Milt Warren did, however, note that officials appeared to have rushed through the forms and in some cases had left certain boxes unchecked.
“There’s no problem on anything, there’s just unanswered questions…,” Warren said. “They just need to go through and cross the t’s and dot the i’s.”
At Monday’s meeting Town Administrator Laura Allen also reviewed the commission’s duties in regard to this fall’s election. Though the candidate filing deadline is Sept. 4, the town does allow write-in candidate filing up until Sept. 25. Allen said that though the ethics commission had 30 days from that date to review the candidate’s financial disclosures, because the election was Oct. 2 they only had about a week to act.
“What I’ve done is tentatively scheduled your next meeting the 25th of September,” she said. “We would simply meet here. If there’s no write-in candidate, what I would do is just put a cancellation out.”
Town Attorney Dave Gaskill said that in the past 12 years there had only been one write-in candidate.
The 2018 municipal election for the District 1, District 4 and at-large council seats is set for Oct. 2. As of this week, Allen said only the incumbent council members had filed. If no other candidates have filed by the write-in deadline on Sept. 25, the election will be cancelled, and the incumbents declared winners.