The girl can’t help it. She doesn’t understand what conflict of interest is.
Rep. Marti Coley, R-Dist. 7, has no plans to give up her $60,000 job at Chipola College, unlike fellow state legislator and Speaker of the House Ray Sansom, who resigned his post at another college amid criticism about his dual role.
The legislator said she sees no conflict in her two jobs and she’s puzzled by the air of criticism surrounding legislators who also work at Florida colleges.
Coley had worked as an adjunct professor at Chipola for two decades before taking the job she now holds there — special assistant of business and community affairs. Her pay started at $45,000 when she took the postion, but she got a 33 percent raise in July of this year, bringing her salary to $60,000.
Her job entails, among other things, fund-raising activities for the Chipola honors program and the school at large.
… As for speculation that her double service puts Chipola at special advantage come budget time in the legislature, Coley said that’s just not so.
She readily admits to advocating for the school she works for — she sees it as part of her job as a representative of the district where Chipola is located — but said her work on the school’s behalf is above-board and really begins after funding requests have made their way through a certain process.
As a legislator, she said, it would be her duty to advocate for the college, whether she was employed by Chipola or not.
“I represent nine counties, and any entity in that community is going to get 100 percent effort from me in the legislature. Even with budget cuts, we have a very large budget and that money is going somewhere,” she said. …
January 10th, 2009 at 8:40AM
In this state, public employees as elected officials are now so common that only geezers like me complain. Virtually all of the flagships and directionals have a state legislator or senator in a sinecure of some sort.