McMillian Vs Lane Ethics Complaint Delayed.

- Tim Enloe; AM Staff

A crowd of about twenty folks gathered Monday evening at city hall to witness the hearing for the ethics complaint filed by Ethics Board member John McMillan against Ethics Board member Carol Lane. The complaint was lodged due to questions regarding Mrs. Lane's manner of filling out a City Of Milton comment card earlier in the year. The hearing ended up being delayed due to the fact that only four of the five ethics board members remaining were available for the hearing; Susan Campbell was not able to attend. During deliberation of whether to hear the case, Ethics Board Chair Person Clint Johnson stated,"I think both sides carry a little bit of the blame in this (delay), the (ethics) board for not being able to get a complete board available, and the defendant's side for taking advantage of the thirty day extension before the hearing when you already had had an ample thirty day period to prepare for it."

After a brief ten minute recess with his fellow members, Mr. Johnson returned to the podium making the following motion: " My motion is that we comply with the seven member requirement which was tied to the more than thirty day extention and that would push it to December 31st...and we adjurn this evening and set a date between now and December 31st to have the hearing when we can have seven members here. If we cannot get seven members then I think we will have to...dismiss the charge because we could not bring it in a timely fashion." The motion passed three to one.

Opinion in the crowd weighed heavily in Mrs. Lane's favor; some calling the complaint politically motivated. One attendee did state that he was quite bothered that Mr. McMillan arrived after the 6pm scheduled time.

Both Carol Lane and John Mcmillan exited quickly after the meeting was adjurned leaving no comment.