To the Editor:

It was reported in The Smoky Mountain News on Aug. 5 that Jackson County Commissioner John Smith’s completion of a statutorily required ethics training within a year of being elected was in question.

A reporter’s public record records request showed that he had not registered with any of the four entities with whom he could have taken the course.

Smith claimed that he recalled taking it but couldn’t find the certificate. He is required to give it to the county clerk to be filed; neither of them had it. Because the certificate was being asked for, Smith immediately took a two-hour course (the minimum amount required but at least eight hours less than the other commissioners took) and provided the county clerk with a certificate dated July 15, 2025.

Since the public records request showed a training date of 11/1/2025, I wrote the county clerk and Smith asking Smith to do the following:

• Clear up why there is no record of you taking the ethics course by the date it was due (on or about Nov. 8, 2023).

• Explain why the attendance certificate you provided is different than those provided by the other commissioners (“The certificate provided by Smith looks nothing like the certificates provided by other commissioners”).

• Explain why the formal Public Records reply from UNC School of Government is dated 11/01/2025.

Commissioner Smith did not reply. However, the county clerk immediately provided the certificate in question, explaining that “Commissioner Smith took an ‘on-demand webinar,’ which is available online until 11/01/2025.  That is why it shows this date.” 

I have compared the certificate with one that a member of the public took for the same course and they do indeed match.

So, questions two and three are answered. What is not answered is why there is no record of Commissioner Smith taking the course within the legally proscribed time frame. So, I called the UNC School of Government to see if there was any chance that the public records request that asked if Smith had “registered for or has completed the required ethics training stipulated in G[eneral] S[tatute] 160a-87(a)” could have missed something. Brian Newport, in charge of the school’s registration, recalled the request and said that while they cannot provide the certificate of completion (the onus of that is on the commissioner to provide to the county clerk) he could verify that Commissioner Smith had definitely not registered for any ethics courses previous to the one in July of this year — over a year and a half late.

This may seem a minor point. However, the fact that a newly elected commissioner failed to spend a paltry two hours fulfilling one of the first requirements of becoming a commissioner does make me question what other rules and regulations he is willing to bypass. One example that immediately comes to mind is his participation in skirting public meeting rules with a telephone tag game that ended in the removal of the plaque the last commissioner board voted (and I emphasize voted) to have installed on the Sylva Sam Confederate statue. So far Commissioner Smith refuses to answer either my or the reporter’s questions himself. I believe that Commissioner Smith should be censured by the remaining board members and should make a public statement in regard to this issue.

Teri Cole-Smith
Whittier