Good Tuesday evening everyone. This is the second meeting of the Inspector General Advisory Board. This meeting is a hybrid meeting which is being conducted both in person and via WebEx teleconference. It is also available to the public through video stream online at the county council website. At this time, I'm going to do a roll call of the board members and please acknowledge your presence as I call your names. Miss Downs. Mr. Rashca. Mr. Queesamberry. Mr. Curry. Mr. Stom. Mr. Curry. Mr. Stom. And Mr. Sedney I think is the only one who who's not here tonight. Okay. We have a quorum. To proceed with our agenda this evening, you all received a copy of the IG Advisory Board meeting minutes from April 10, 2025. Are there any issues, corrections, or questions from any of the board members? If none, then I move to approve the Inspector General Advisory Board meeting minutes, dated April 10, 2025. Any further discussion? All in favor then say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Any up opposed say nay? All right, then the motion to approve the April 10th meeting minutes passes. We will now proceed with our regular agenda. First we have Ms. Anju Bennett, Human Resources Administrator for Howard County. We'll give us an overview of the hiring process for the Inspector General, the next steps and the timeline for recruitment. Thank you, Chair. Salem, I provided a packet of questions. I'm really thankful that you sent me your questions ahead of time. I just want to introduce Kristi Ford Johnson-Ford, who is my deputy, I'm sorry about that, Kristi. Krist I work together on all areas of employment. And Christine has the background of law, but she also now supervises the recruitment team, so she's going to be working with me on this piece. I come to Howard County after 30 years in public and private sector, being policy director, heading up in internal audit office, working to put the first legislation together for internal inspector general. So we have that background, so I wanted to tell you that we understand your needs, but we also need your input. So I answered your questions, hopefully, completely. But I also know that you're going to have a lot of insight we don't have on the direction and the types of candidates you want to have. So I've provided in your packet the responses as well some samples to keep the process moving along, which will include, I've provided sample advertisement that you can take a look at as a board and get me your comments. Also provided another sample of interview questions that you could use to pair down from. So, I utilized my background in finance, my original studies were in finance, and the work that we've done with audit teams to see if that might be in line with the type of questions you're looking for, but please don't feel that these are meant to be complete or, you know, of or your voice. So I want to make sure that we have your feedback. They're just starters to get the conversation going. So I want to pause to make sure there's any area that you want me to focus on as I move. Thanks, Karen. For your life. So we'll try to come prepared for whatever we meet with you. But I just generally, I wanted to mention there are two documents that I gave. One was a org chart that has the positions that report to this office. I think the refund passed task with helping with first recruiting your inspector general and will take your lead. We will provide whatever support, guidance, etc. that you need. And then the other positions probably will be filled after you fill your inspector general because I imagine they want to help build their team that comes on. But that work chart will give you the salary ranges that are currently in place. We don't hire at the top of the range unless like somebody's qualifications are, you know, in line with that. But typically, what we do is whenever we have a strong candidate and the advisory board, of course, would be the ones that select the candidate. We would look at their qualifications and then make a recommendation on the staff. And we look at, you know, who are their counterparts? When we look at qualifications, we look at, you know, what are they bringing to the table? How much more than the minimum and preferred qualifications that they bring in? Like somebody may have a number of certifications that are beyond the minimum requirements. So in your packet of the sample, I've put minimum requirements which are required by the county, which is a bachelor's degree, plus some years of experience. But I've also preferred skills and qualifications that you might want to look at and say, now these are the kind of preferred things that we're looking at, but there may be other things that you suggest. It's a, you know what, we understand the county's position description for this position and the salary range, the salary range is firm and the position description minimum requirements are firm, but this is an executive exempt position, meaning it's a little bit different than the classified service and you have that background with the federal government, you understand their process. So with the classified employees we have certain requirements. We have to advertise positions for a minimum of two weeks. We look through the qualifications and only those people that meet the minimum qualifications are then ranked and we send the top three to ten candidates to the interview panel to consider and they have to interview all of those. So for executive except because there are a point of positions or some flexibility but generally what we find is most departments hiring departments or advisory boards, they want to stick with somewhat similar guidelines. So for example, in my write-up, I've recommended that we advertise for a minimum of three weeks. The market is good now. We have a lot of candidates that are looking for jobs, but this is a very specialized position. And folks that are in this position, unless they're already in the market actively looking, it's hard for them. They generally don't leave their IG positions, right? Because it takes a while to learn an organization once you're there and you're successful, you don't leave readily. So I would recommend that we do at least a three week higher. So my recommendation actually is to advertise that has a continuous advertisement, like continuous until filled. But after the three week mark, my team looks at all of the candidates that have come in, rank them for you, forward to you only those candidates that meet at least the minimum requirements which are outlined in the right of what I've provided. And then I can work with you if you like, you know, I can once we rank them for you, you can let me know do you want interviews with these folks? Do you want me to go get more information? I think that the questions we ask in the advertisement are also important. So the sample advertisements here, but what we can do is add supplemental questions that you want all of your candidates to answer for you as part of the vetting process. So to me, there are really three vetting processes. One is when they turn in your application. What do you want to see with their application practice? For me, for example, I like writing samples. I worked in policy, so it makes it's important to me to see how people logically write something. Maybe you want to audit report with a redacted information sensitive or an audit plan. So you can think about those kind of things that you feel like as an advisory board, besides your resume, what would you like to see? So those things we can build into the supplement of questions. So to me, that's the first screen. The second screening comes from my team when we look at the qualifications. We rank them for you if there are, you know, distinctions between the candidates. Well, say this looks like the strongest candidate. This might be a person that meets the mental qualifications. So rank from strongest to, and some of it's objective because you may see with your qualifications something that's stronger. So by no means this means this is the best candidate. But just from their applications this is the strongest packet of qualifications that we see. Then. Can I ask you a question? Certainly. This ranking process is this subjective or do you have a numerical grading scale that you apply to each criteria? Yes. So what we do is look at that's a very good question. For ranking we just simply say these are the strongest candidates with the for example somebody has three or four certifications we might say this person has 20 years of experience Will do probably a chart more than a score like this Canada has 20 years of experience as three active certifications as a CPA. Maybe at the bottom you'll see this candidate meets the qualifications of having a voucher's degree and the years of experience and one certification. So we would rank them in terms of qualification. Maybe I shouldn't say ranking so much has providing strongest, yes, strongest qualifications for experience had to the least amount of experience in qualifications. But by no means would that mean a ranking for the next screen, which would be the advisory board, doing your interviews, reviewing the documents that they provide. And at that time, I think it would be important for you to score them, just to make sure that each of you gets to weigh in on the questions. And the questions I've provided for you are organized into categories. And you'll see them, I believe, on the back of your packets. So I've labeled each item. So sample entropy questions, for example. There are last two pages of your packet. And I don't want to go through what the questions are because it's a public meeting. But you'll see that I've divided the questions up into different skill sets. And there may be other areas that you want to include. You may want to pair down these questions, because they're quite a few to select from. And based on what you feel, we can narrow them down. And then you can rank them a score one to five, each of the board members rank the candidates one to five in each of the categories. and then you can rank them a score one to five each of the board members. Ranked the candidates one to five in each of the categories. And then total the scores. So Ms. Bennett, two things then. The first will you give us like a scoring sheet? Certainly. So we'll have something to work with. Yes, absolutely. All right. And for purposes of timing. So if we open the advertisement and application process for three weeks, how long does it take HR to actually score the candidates to give us the three to ten one week? One week. So I would say that Christian or team will actively look at candidates as they come in. I think, you know, we want to wait till the at least three week end and I would, Chris, do you think that's reasonable? One week? Yes, I think that's reasonable. So our team will just, I think, Christie, as the applications come in, you just start building the chart and so we'll keep it concurrent so it's not like we're waiting to the very last minute. As candidates come in, they can just put their qualifications like a summary of the qualifications. And then we should, I don't know if you want me to send it to you by email. You can tell me how you want to communicate if you want us to meet with you to go over the candidates. We can also do that. This is one of knowledge, Mr. Curry online has a question. Go ahead, Mr. Curry. Thank you so much. And thank you for being here and going through this information with us. So quick question, as far as our e-rates and qualifications, how did you come up with the range? Did you base it on other IGs in the state of Maryland or with the other process that you did you went about? I'm just thinking about it for our purposes, the type of clientele. Clevver Phenis, we might get based on competitiveness. Thank you. Thank you, Board Member Curry. I want to make sure that I understood your question because I think you might have gone out a little bit for me. Did you ask about the competitiveness of the salary? Yes, thank you. Okay, thank you so much. Yes, in fact, we did quite a bit of research on the salary. We looked at all the surrounding jurisdictions, both compared it with the internal auditor and the IG because the IG is ranked higher. And we looked at both all of the jurisdictions that are the major jurisdictions I believe eight of them in the state of Maryland. So all of the big eight Montgomery, Printed, or DeSander, Rondle and so forth. Then we also had an external consultant that we're doing classifications and compensation study right now for the county who did a separate validation of the salaries and they were consistent with the findings. We presented those to the county council with the research so they also saw the research and they saw how detailed that research was. And this is a very competitive range. We shouldn't have problems for creating people based on the salary. Hopefully that answers your question. Thank you. You're welcome. Ms. Bennett, just another question on the interview process for us. Do you recommend that the entire board interview each candidate or that we split them up and then we have like a series of interviews? How would you recommend we do that? I actually think having a consistent panel is important because you could have each of you brings different qualifications at the table. And I think it's really important that whatever panel you choose, whether it's a full board or you might have a sub panel that does the first level interview, sometimes that's a perimeter because it's difficult to get everyone together. You can certainly use virtual interviews for your first screening and do a screening and then pick the top candidates and then have the full board weigh in on the vital selection. Or you can start with having the full board. But sometimes it's difficult to get so many people, their schedule's. And again, just so I know this for keeping track of it. So they'll submit to us no more than 10 of the best candidates. Well, we can do anything you'd like, because this is executive exempt. You have some flexibility. We might find that we are only getting three or four candidates, right? Strong candidates, and I would say candidates have meet the minimum requirements, because you want people that meet the minimum requirements that are set by county code. If we get four strong candidates for the IG position, I think you should move forward with starting the interview. If we get 20, I will forward all of them or whatever the board prefers. Some people prefer top five, top 10. I think the 10 is a lot to start with interviews. So maybe we give you the, we'll see it the three-week mark, I will give you an update either way. And let you know how many candidates you have that met the mental requirements. Everyone that met the mental requirements, I think, will chart them for you. And then you can select as a group. I could certainly meet with you, Chrissy and I can come out and meet and say these are all the candidates we received. To receive 20, we will say we got 20, eight of them met the requirements. Five of those are really stellar candidates because they go beyond the minimum requirements for the position. And then the advisory board can decide how many people they want to interview. Thank you. advisory board can decide how many people they want to interview. The last, I'm sorry if I'm working backwards from the document, but on the prior to the I've also given you a sample job advertisement. And that includes just a general write-up of the position, some broad categories of duties. You don't want to advertise them that's super, super long. People get turned off by that. So this is still two pages. We have to put a little bit more information related to non-describination, those kind of clauses that are standard for ads will certainly add those. On the second page of the job advertisement, I've labeled them page one and page two. You'll see the qualifications and you'll see the first two bullets are the minimum qualifications. about's a bachelor's degree and ten years related experience, as well as a certified inspector general. Those are things that they must meet to be in this classification of inspector general. The additional preferred qualifications, those are suggestions that we're making that the advisory board can consider. They may not be exactly what you want, so you can certainly weigh in. We've looked at other IG advertisements, position descriptions, what do people look at? And sometimes lawyers are very good in that, but I think you probably want somebody with a very strong financial background as well. So we put those areas for you. Mr. Stone, I see that you have your hand raised. I did you have a question as well? Yes, I just wanna do clarify since you're doing the initial screenings on our behalf here, when you say related experience, what exactly would the qualification be that your office is looking for when they go through that? Certainly. So we would look for, if we're talking about related experience for Inspector General, we would look for somebody with strong auditing experience, program oversight, certainly experience being Inspector General, working with broad waste and abuse in particular, because that's a really important part of this job. Writing reports, making presentations on these types of matters. Sometimes public sector experience is something we would highlight for you because being an IG in the public sector, sometimes you have additional protocols. I don't know if they'll put the information into their application, but certainly having familiarity with governing standards, such as a yellow book standards and other standards. I think those are all related experience. Ultimately, it's the advisory board that would look through the experience to say, this is the type of person we want to be, the inspector general, but we would highlight experience that appears related from their write-up. And the write-up is just one portion. People can put a lot of things in their write-up. It's really the interview and the questions you ask and do the deep dive to see how related that experiences. Hope that answers the question. Yes, thank you. You're welcome. And Mr. Quentin Berry, I see your hand is raised as well. Yeah, this may be just a minor detail and it actually may be in the description and maybe I just overlooked it, but we may want to put in there that if somebody does, if they are an attorney or a CPA that their license is in good standing. That's a very good point. We can certainly add it. And just so you know, we do verify licenses and certifications. And when, if the board is amenable, we will do the reference checks for you unless you want to do the reference checks yourselves, but we will verify the degree. We will verify the licenses. And to your point, we will make sure that they are in good standing. You just answered my next question. So thank you. You're very welcome. Is there a background investigation that the county goes through for these positions? All right, so thank you board member for that question. Your question on background checks all employees of the county go through a background check. We do a criminal investigation and receive that information and if there there are any concerns, we would certainly share those concerns. I wanted to mention that in the application process at the bottom of page two, we've recommended that they provide a cover letter, a resume, list of references, and you can let me know if you want more than three professional references and a sample document. But take a look at these. These are not set in stone. These are just suggestions for the board. And you may want, you know, particular types of things in your experience that you feel would be very helpful for your bedding. When you get these, how long typically is this emission? I mean, because usually you think of a resume as being like a page. Are these what you get like reams and reams of paper or do people try to keep it brief? Yeah, it's not as lengthy as a federal application, but we do have a standard application for them that folks complete for us to give us some basic information that they might otherwise leave off their resume. For example, what was appeared to time that they were employed. If they left a job, why did we leave that job? That kind of information, I think, is very helpful for the screening process because some people say, I left for a better opportunity. Other people say, I was asked to leave or, you know, I'm downsize. But you can see a pattern of somebody's leaving a job very frequently. And you might not see that on a resume because people do resume sometimes without timelines. They do it more as a summary resume. So we use the application process, sorry, application, which is a few pages, about five or six pages. Depending on the supplemental questions that the board may want us to add to the application, it could be a little bit longer. And then typically the application is all that's needed. We won't accept a resume in lieu of the application, but they can certainly upload their resume. And most professionals upload their resume. If we asked them to upload a cover letter and a resume, which I think we should, I think that's helpful. Because sometimes in the application itself, folks can express all of their experience because they want to add samples or other information that's helpful. I have a question, but it's probably not from Hispanic. So Nick and I say, let me ask you this. So if we decide that we'd like to make the next meeting, the meeting at which we have a final job description. So obviously that would mean between now and then people might weigh in with modifications and changes and be prepared to give that to Ms. Bennett. Is that something we have to vote on? Or is it something internal that we would just take care of and then present to HR? That is an excellent question. I see that we have Amanda Myhol online from Office of Law. I will actually defer to her to see if a vote will be needed by the advisory board to agree on the job description or if that's something that can just be handled through this mutual agreement. So under Maryland case law, the way that a body takes action is through a majority of its members so you would want a majority of the board to affirmatively support that job description. not, whether or not you do it as, I mean, typically you would have motions and votes, but there can also be like general a scent, but you would need to record that a majority of the board supported whatever document is agreed upon. How can we do that process without running into an issue with open meetings in terms of either exchanging information or that type of thing that we wouldn't run a foul of that? Well, when you're doing a job, my outfit cuff responses, if you're doing a job description, that's really setting policy. But when it comes to selecting candidates, interviewing candidates, things of that nature, some of those tasks don't need to be done in an open session. They can be done in a closed session. But to the extent you're setting policy, those kinds of things are open session matters. If we're setting what we wanted announcement to look like, where would that fall? I can do further research, but my inclination is to say that's probably open session. So again, so we, so we understand my plan would have been to circulate Miss Bennett's handout and have, I don't know, a week or 10 days for the board members to respond to Kathleen and me maybe for any modifications or changes. We end up with one final version. And then the next time we have a meeting, we could either all talk about in advance and indicate we voted by a majority for that version or else we could have a vote here. But all of the discussion and the changes of the changes of the modifications would occur kind of off camera. Is that okay? So what you could do is you could have you could send out a document and ask board members to individually respond to you and then you could compile that information for discussion at the meeting. What you should not do is have email communications amongst yourselves outside of an open meeting. Okay, I think I think I am making some. There'll be an initial email for everybody to take a look at the document and then come back with any changes of modifications or whatever they want. And then I imagine there'll be emails back and forth on those changes, but no discussion. And we have the discussion here. That would be the way I'd propose it be done. Is that okay? So what I would say is the back and forth is the part that should not happen over email. Like you can send out the document and then have members respond directly to you and you can compile or staff can compile those changes for discussion at the next meeting. But in terms of open meetings, act the reply all on email is not your friend. Like you really should not be engaging in those kinds of modifications and discussions over email. But you could do it one on one. Like if I got a reply or input from Steve and I had questions or something, I could go back to Steve and say, I don't understand this or can you clarify or something like that. I think what we should do is pick one person to be the point person for the job description. That person should individually email each of the other six members of the board and ask them to review the job description and provide their individual input only back to the point person. That's it. Do not copy anybody else. So in other words, if David is the point person, he would send me an email. I would review it. And I would say, David, I reviewed the job description. And here are my five comments. And I would only send that to David. And David would collect that from each of the individual six board members. And then he would compile all that. And in the next meeting, he would go over all of them and say, okay,'ve had you know and some of them may overlap some of the things I bring up Kathleen may bring up or Mitch may bring up. And I think that's how it should be done. Do I hear a volunteer from you, Steve? I'm very happy to pass this one to you, Steve, if you'd like to do it. I'm happy to do it, sure. Thank you. I'm Mr. Carey. I see your hand is up as well. Yeah, just so thank you. So just for clarifications, I understand a part about Steve. Now, it will be the point of contact to receive comments. But would it be out of scope or out of compliance? if we had like a Google share or a word share? We all can just have one document we put our comments in. We may not be going back and forth there, but it's a collaborative space where we're not sharing. We're not talking about the comments, but all the comments can be there. Would that be out of scope for this action? So there have been no open meetings, compliance, board opinions or case law that I'm aware of that speaks to a shared document and whether or not that could violate open meetings. The caution that I would say is that if you are, if a majority of you are in the document at the same time, and you have comments back and forth, if that turns into a discussion, that potentially could be a violation of the Open Meetings Act, but if you're individually just going in there and inputting your comments without any sort of discussion, that's less likely to do so. I would avoid probably doing that. I would just caution against that. I think we don't want to be creating any case law. I would suggest we stick with individual emails. Fair enough, Steve. Steve, this is Nick. I would just offer. I would offer also if you need staff support, either myself or Isaiah would be happy to help with, you know, compiling the list of the feedback or what have you to, and then making like a red line job description with the feedback to present at the next meeting if that's something you, you and the board would like. I think that would be helpful. In other words, it would be okay if I individually email each of the six board members and copy the both of you on each of those emails. That way you could see what's going back and forth between me and the individual board members. Correct. I believe so, yes. Thank you, Steve. Sure, no problem. And also just to talk about if we can about the interview process, I maybe that's jumping ahead, but but my thought would be initially is maybe to pick a small subset of the board, whether that's maybe three members to interview the initial round of candidates. Then when we have that whittled down to maybe the top two or three candidates to have the entire board participate in the interview, I'd like to just throw that out to the other board members to see what you think about that. No, I had asked a question originally about whether we do this in tears or not. I happen to like that idea. I just do. We'll go faster too because I just have fewer people we have to worry about for the initial round of interviews. I think it will become clearer once we get the number of candidates that we have. That's true. I agree with that. I think once we have the number, it'll make more sense of a tiered scenario be valid. Sorry for the interruptions. No, no, no, no. These are very helpful, very helpful comments. On the questions that you sent me, which I thought were very, very helpful and very thoughtful questions. On number five, you were asking, you know, the structure of the announcement, of course, we provide you a sample and the structure might look slightly different, but the meat is there and you will go, you will let me know like what you finalize, you know, as your comments for things you want in there, but the positions for the county are generally advertised on government jobs.com. Sometimes I think a more targeted advertisement's needed, and depending on the position, we look for associations and so forth. So we've recommended a few that we think would be helpful to have a broader reach. Because sometimes folks don't think of going on government jobs. Although government jobs does get picked up by a lot of search engines for free, but maybe for a day, maybe for a week, when it's free. So I've recommended that you consider, indeed, we'll certainly put on LinkedIn, you know, but there's an association of Inspector General that we would use. And GFOA, which is a government finance officers association, I think is also a very good organization. But you may have other associations you want us to look into. So by all means, where you feel like maybe perhaps you're part of an association or you'd know of good groups that you think would be other places we could consider by all means this is only just a sampling. And then I think we've covered most of the questions that you have. I hope, you know, with enough detail. I don't want to read through everything. But if there's any area that you want me to elaborate on, whether it's today, you have questions afterwards. Certainly, Nick and Isaiah would make sure that I have the questions as like they did for this. And we will try to answer as fully as we can. And a little available to help you in any way that you need. So a little targeting question. What is a realistic date to have somebody selected? If we have an announcement say in two weeks, God be willing to creep down rice. And it's out for three. We're into the first of June. So is it realistic or we listen in the wind to be targeting early to mid July? I think mid July is very reasonable. It just depends how quickly the board is. How quickly we act when it gets back to us. Yes. We give you our commitment that if the positions advertise for three weeks, Chrissie and her team will review the candidates as they come in. We will be forwarding everything to you by the fourth week. So that's four weeks right there from the time that it's advertised. Before it gets advertised, I'd want your input on just the advertisement, the types of qualifications you're looking for in the types of, if you want them submit any documents for you samples, you just identify that and where you want to advertise. My team will quickly make those updates to the advertisement, we will get them out to all the sites that you wish to have them and that should not take more than a few days to turn that around. So the screening piece then really falls with the board, a de-advisory board, and you may want to do interviews, you may want to do second interviews, and then you select your candidate. Let's say you finish all your interviews in two weeks. Then you'll tell us who your candidate is. We will send them a link and information for the background check. Background checks typically take three to five business days, so they don't take a very long time. We make it a priority to turn around our positions quickly. And so then we would let you know if the background check has been cleared. Now, the background check is done after conditional offer. I should have mentioned that. The final offer is made after the background check is confirmed. So the conditional offer, you know, the board would make that conditional offer. We could certainly write up anything that you need. We could be the point of contact to communicate the offer on behalf of the board. And then once they sign that document on the conditional offer, they would complete the background check. The offer to the background check, to the final offer, could take as little as a week, depending on how long the background check takes and when it falls, because it's business days. And so I think from the time you make the selection to the time the offer's firm could be two weeks. That helps. I have a question about the professional references that are being listed. Yes. At what point of the process would be best to, if we wanted to check these professional references, get involved in that, would that be done for every candidate or just for the ones that are the ones that are selected or the final three? What is your advice there? I would say your top candidates. So some candidates don't want their references done because they have jobs and they don't want their employers to know. They want to wait till the conditional offer. They have an offer in hand and then they'll agree. But you could ask your candidates, your top candidates, to provide you a list of professional references that are outside of their employers so you could, we could certainly do the references to your very good points. Sometimes the candidates are so close that the reference checks may be really what helps you make the decision. So you could ask for professional references. Now I will say most people provide professional references from folks that are going to give them good professional references. So I think speaking to the employer where they've been employed either current or past is really critical. So I think that portion of speaking to current employers will come after the conditional offers made so that you're really looking at your final candidate there. But if you wanted to consider your broader candidate pool, say your top two or three people, we could ask for a list of professional references outside of their employer and if you'd like the board could do the references or we could certainly help with that and summarize what we, the feedback we've received. Could we also ask for during the interviews for permission to talk to a previous employer? My experience has been that you get a little bit more candor. If you go back to someone they're not dealing with at the moment. Yeah, anyone that is on their application, when they turn in their application to us, you can let them know that we will be reaching out to their past employers and do they have any objection. I know if you had any other questions, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I wanted to be thorough. Anyone have any more questions for Ms. Bennett? Okay, so then seems like we're in this position now of having Steve now as the point of contact for the final job description. And that will deal one-on-one with the six other board members to get some input on whether there are any changes or modifications to the proposal. And whether we work Dennis with your version or this penance version that's that's okay. I'll incorporate my comments based on what I produce. Okay, that's fine. I'm my comments. you to do that. I'm going to ask you to do that. I'm going to ask you to do that. I'm going to ask you to do that. I'm going to ask you to do that. I'm going to ask you to do that. I'm going to ask you to do that. I'm going to ask you to do that. I'm going to ask you to do that. job advertisement? Sorry and the reason I want to clarify for you is that every position in the county has a job advertisement. Sorry. And the reason I want to clarify for you is that every position in the county has a job description. So I will, you know, meet with Nick to make sure that we have something in place as well. The job description is kind of like your guiding tool that you'll use a set of expectations for your position, but it's not necessarily what you'll put in the advertisement. It might be a little bit more descriptive, and that might be something that the advisory board wants to think about in terms of expectations. If you need help there, we can certainly provide it. I know the legislation frames out things. We try to fold some of that into the advertisement, or it's appropriate, but certainly about reports and the reporting, you know, where they have to provide reports. Those are things that you might want to consider in the job description. And the ubiquitous for the federal government, other duties as assigned, certainly for sure. Good day, I have a suggestion. Would it be possible or should we consider splitting out the job interview questions as a separate exercise from the job announcement? Because we'll have a little bit more time to consider the questions. And we might want to think about maybe two tearing the interview questions between the first group that we interview and then maybe having more indepth questions for the final group. That's fine. So we work from these questions and we figure out if there we can have more suggestions. So just to do these questions. I'd be happy to work on that separately from this. Steven's effort. So it reduces the amount that he's got to deal with. That's fine. And I'm happy to work with you on that. Okay, great. Good. Okay, so then ultimately, I think the biggest issue now would be, Steve, maybe you need to weigh in on this. When you think that you would have time to sort of have a final version together so that we can then discuss it at either the next meeting or the meeting after that. Well maybe we propose the next meeting three weeks down the road instead of two so that we can get everything to you. You have time to digest it, put it together, and then we don't have to wait four weeks for that. That's fine. That works for me, then. Okay. All right. So we haven't talked about a date for the next meeting, but we'll put it three weeks down the road. We'll see what we can do about that. We'll talk about that when we get to that part. All right. Thank you, miss Ben. I appreciate it. Thank you both. Yes. Thank you. We will. Thank you for giving out your cards so we can have a way to contact you. And Nick will share my cell phone number. So if you have questions any time, please feel free. Thank you. Okay. Let's move now to the next agenda item, which is a discussion of the rules of procedure for the advisory board. With the county code, the board is required to adopt rules of procedure and accordance with the Administrative Procedures Act. These rules would govern how the board is structured and conducts its business. Mr. Reinhardt has provided examples of written rules of procedure from other Howard County boards and commissions for all of us to reference. Nick, is there anything you want to add to the process or the timeline for these? Sure, so as Chair Sala mentioned, it's required by code that the board, the advisory board adopts rules of procedures, the governance proceedings, more or less addresses how the board operates. It doesn't necessarily kind of set policy. It just talks about how often you meet, your structure, how you make your decisions as a board, et cetera. These will need to be filed with the county executive and the council administrator. In my experience, dealing with other boards working on rules, maybe updating the rules of procedure, there usually is a public process where they get public input on these rules. So I believe that up to you, I don't believe it is required by code, but it is highly recommended and Ms. Myhole can correct me on that if I'm wrong. And I would recommend at least one public process before adoption. I can, I'm happy to recirculate the example rules of procedure, but I provided them from the Citizens Election Fund, I believe, from the Police Accountability Board. Anyways, there, they can be as straightforward or as detailed as you would like. And I believe in accordance to the advice Miss Mayhill gave you all about how to exchange feedback and information. I believe Mr. Salem, you provided a draft of some rules of procedure for this board. I believe we should follow. Myles' recommendation on how each of you should give feedback to each other. As far as, you know, just one-on-one emailing back and forth and then compiling someone being a point person compiling that and then presenting it at a future meeting for in a public setting for feedback. That's fine Nick and I would volunteer myself since I drafted the, at least the rules for us that currently sit out there that I'd be the point person as long as nobody else wants it. And I'm happy then to email everybody one on one. I can copy the two of you to each of those emails, right? Absolutely. All right. And know, because I did originally copy misdowns, is that an issue? Should I just make it one-on-one with each person with my vice chair included in that? It's my healer. I saw you have your hand raised. Did you want to comment on that as well? So I raised my hand for a different reason, but I will comment on that. It's not a meeting under the Open Meeting Act unless there is a quorum of people and by people, I mean members of the board staff doesn't count as members of the board, even though they're very important. And so there are seven of you, if I am remembering correctly, so that would be four would could constitute would constitute a quorum and therefore could be a meeting. So as long as you're under that number, I think you can copy your vice chair. The reason that I raised my hand was just to clarify one thing about the process for the rules of procedure under the Administrative Procedures Act. And I think it was a summary of the process was in a document that I shared quite some time ago. But there is a hearing and notice requirement for the public, but I can get Nick and Gertair all that information so that you're sure you're following that process. Okay, so Amanda, so again, I understand if I take, if I have a series of one-on-one email communications with the rest of the board, copying Kathleen and the staff. And then I put together a final version of the proposed rules. That is the time then that we'll have a public hearing or meeting on that. Just have to make a some indication to Nick and Isaiah that we're ready for this such a meeting. All right. You could, um, just similar with the job description, you could email the board members and solicit their input on the draft rules of procedure that then could be part of the discussion in public session. Okay, that sounds good. If I have any questions, I'll be in touch with you, I guess. Absolutely, I'm happy to help. All right. So just so everybody knows, I drafted these rules using all three exemplars that Nick had given out. I think the majority of the provisions took from the police accountability board rules of procedure, although I did use all three. There are highlighted portions in here where I had some questions and make sure that I'm either citing to the correct law or that I didn't know what the law was or I wasn't sure if there was a point person or whatever it is. There are highlights in here. And so I'd ask that everybody take a look not just at the sort of published provisions that I put in there, but the questions that I have, and you can all let me know individually if you have any answers for those. And we'll work it out with Nick and Isaiah. What I did, I think, is just essentially go through a series of provisions that would establish the board. an understanding of members and their service time, as well as what their obligations are, when the meetings take place and what is required at the meetings, just to make sure that there's decorum and everything else, some of those provisions are in there as well, and then some provisions on the public participation. And then I had a pretty much a last section on the functions and duties of the board. And that turned out to be pretty general because I'm not exactly sure what we should put in there, other than we're choosing an IG. And we have to write a report I think once a year. So as you look through this, I think you certainly make any comments you want. I think the provisions that probably need the most help would be the functions duties of the board on page four and running on to page five. And so just let me know any changes you have, any concerns you have, and I'll be happy to work with you. Are there any statutory requirements for what needs to be in this document specifically? Amanda, I'll let you answer that one if you don't mind. Sure. Thank you. There's no specific statutory requirements of what has to be in your rules of procedure. I think that overview was a very good description of what goes in rules of procedures. In terms of your functions, really when you look at the code that has created this body is really where you're going to find what your functions and duties are and those will be what you generally will put in the rules of procedure. The one caution I would give you, I haven't seen the draft document, but the one caution I would give you is that Maryland case law is very clear that rules of procedure, as was described earlier, really relate to how the board operates. So you could not put in your rules a procedure something that is substantive lawmaking. An example that's just off the top in my head is how you conduct your meetings and reproducing what your functions and duties from the code in the rules of procedure is perfectly fine. But if you were to want to give yourself the authority to, for instance, hire, I don't know, I'm just making this up the county auditor for instance, that would be substantive rulemaking and inappropriate material for the rules of procedure. I just wanted to make that broad comment. So but Amanda so one of of the, I mean, we'll get you a copy of this so you can look at it. But one of the sections I have is selecting the IG. Should that not be in here? Well, your code provision has that as a duty of the IG. So that wouldn't be new substantive law that you're making. That is basically just reproducing what your statutory duties are, which is fine. Yeah, we can't select that we can't put in the rules that we're going to select the deputy IG because the statute says that the IG will do that. So I think that's probably what the mayor is talking about. Correct. Those kinds of giving yourselves more authority than what you have by statute would be inappropriate lawmaking or legislating in the rules and you wouldn't be able to do that. Okay, that sounds fine. Can we get you a copy of this and that could be in touch with you too? Yes, that's my, I just sent you a digital copy. Okay, good. Are there any other questions on the rules of procedure? Damon, are you going to send that out to those of us who are online? Can we do that Isaiah? Oh yes, we can. Absolutely. It looks like a copy was, oh yes, yes, I can certainly send that out. So they don't have any, they don't have a copy yet? It looks like this we just made, this is put in the bin for everybody's leave. Oh yes, no, we had paper copies, we had printed copies, but we can, yeah, we can send them virtually. I will have it over to you all shortly. That sounds fine. And then so ultimately, I will be the point of contact for the modifications, changes, additions, whatever you might have for the rules of procedure. And I will add Amanda to my list so that I'm in touch with her just to make sure that everything is correct when she has a copy as well. Any other questions on that issue? All right. So it looks like the last thing we're going to do is schedule our next advisory board meeting. And I think what we probably would want to do now, I'm looking at Kathleen, I thought about May 19th, which would be a Tuesday. That's a Monday. All right, so let's talk about when we might want to meet perhaps the week before and we'll talk, make sure that's okay with Steve while he's online. So my proposal would be a little more than two weeks from tonight to give Steve the opportunity to, you know, to digest and fashion all the modifications that may be necessary for the job advertisement. So it's the Thursday after two weeks. That would be May 15th. May 15th. Steve, how does that seem to you? That'll give you two weeks and two days. Is that enough time? Yeah, that should be fine. As long as what I plan to do is probably this Thursday sent each of you an individual email. So you can between now and then start thinking about things that you might want to add to that job advertisement. And then hopefully if I get those responses within a few days or by the following week with Nick and Isaiah's help, we can compile all of those suggestions along with what we've been provided into one document and talk about it at the next meeting. If that's okay. Sorry, we, looking at the council PIO calendar. There is another meeting of the planning board that evening and we're just trying to as staff, we may need to get in touch with you this later this week to see if that date could actually work. If not, we may need to push it to the following week of the 19th. And we're getting a little bit of information from one of our online supporters from technical room. We do have that planning board meeting, we'll take place in Bannocker. So we technically do have a system in place for us to do both meetings at the same time. So if the 15th is something that works for everyone, we could still accommodate that. Okay. is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, My biggest concern was Steve and it sounds like he can do the 15th. So, no, I propose. It's all the same. It's all the same. Yeah. I propose that we look toward May 15th if we can do it on Thursday evening. It works. Same time at 630. That works. Okay. And the rules procedure are sort of a parallel effort that was not holding up anything else. So we can, I will get together whatever I can between now and the 15th. But as it turns out, it's not ready. It's okay. We just move it to the next meeting. But I'll have hopefully a final version between now and next two meetings down the road. And then Dennis and I will talk about the questions and maybe we can have something also for the next meeting. Okay. Okay, so the focus for the next meeting would be the announcement and maybe the questions. I think that's going to all the while. I think that's going to be a lot to work through if we try and do all three types of documents and accommodate all the poly questions. I don't think there's a rush on the interview questions at the moment. So I would propose we postpone that until after these first two documents are done. Let's at least plan then on the job advertisement. And then, you know, as we're working towards the 15th, if something else is ready, or there's something that, you know, we think we can discuss as part of something, one of those things that's still remaining, then we can add that to the agenda. But if that sounds good, we'll have a meeting on the 15th. We will deal with at least the job advertisement and whatever else may come on way between now and then. Would it would it interest the board to have Miss Bennett or Miss Jackson Ford or someone from HR attend the meeting on the 15th? I think that would be a good idea. Okay. Yeah. Fantastic. And Amanda, I don't want to stick you to be present for every meeting, but it would certainly help. So if you can, you know, if you feel like being there and you can make it, that's great. If not, you know, we'll be in touch with you. Yeah, I will definitely check my calendar and see what I can do. Thank you. OK, if there are no final comments or questions, then that concludes our April 29th meeting. We'll see you again in two and a half weeks. Fantastic. Good night. Thank you all. Thank you. I'm very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, thank you, everyone. Thank you.