OBERLIN — Ethics charges against Oberlin Police Chief Grady Haynes appear to be headed to an Ethics Adjudicatory Board hearing.
No date for the hearing has been set, according to documents released in late January.
The state Ethics Board said Haynes violated ethics laws by getting paid his salary as police chief and receiving additional income from the Local Agency Compensated Enforcement program at the same time.
The LACE program is a partnership between the district attorney, city judge and police chief that allows criminal court funds to pay off-duty officers to issue traffic citations.
Officers are only allowed to receive LACE pay when working the traffic enforcement detail on their off time. The ordinance establishes LACE pay at $15 per hour.
Haynes, who has been police chief since January 2011, said he has done nothing wrong. “I was doing what my town asked me to do,” Haynes said. “I was just doing my job.”
The town amended an ordinance on Dec. 13, 2010, allowing the police chief to participate in the LACE program.
As police chief, Haynes is always on call; he receives $33,612.80 a year in salary from the town. He also receives $2,400 annually from the Allen Parish Sheriff’s Office for assisting in emergency responses outside Oberlin.
Under the LACE program, Haynes received $16,785 in 2013 by working 1,119 hours. In 2014, he received $21,885 for working 1,459 hours. In 2015, he received $19,530 for 1,302 hours and last year he received $14,565 for working 971 hours. This compensation was in addition to his salary as police chief.
According to the daily reports Haynes filed in order to be compensated for the LACE program, he typically worked six-hour periods between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. Ethics laws ban public servants from receiving “anything of economic value, other than compensation and benefits” from an entity in which they are employed for the performance of their job.
Ethics laws also prohibit a public servant from being paid for doing the same work for which he’s already been compensated.
It is also against the law for a public servant to authorize his own pay. Because he is head of the Police Department, Haynes may have violated state law when he approved the daily reports documenting the hours he worked in the LACE program.
The Ethics Adjudicatory Board was asked by the Ethics Board on Jan. 19 to hold a hearing to decide if Haynes violated state laws. If so, they were requested to levy necessary penalties.
Vivian Haley Williams and Tracy Baker are the board’s trial attorneys.
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