BREAKING NEWS: Mike Guessford guilty of violating WCBOE ethics policy

By Ryan Miner 

The Washington County Board of Education today voted to ratify Washington County Public Schools’ independent Ethics Advisory Panel’s decision to hold Mike Guessford responsible for multiple ethical violations committed while serving as a Board of Education member since December 2014.

It turns out that the mysterious agenda item, “Opinion and Order, 01-2016,” is the Ethics Panel decision that finds Guessford at fault for a series of ethical violations that are contained within his submitted ethics disclosure forms.

Mike Guessford and Karen Harshman were both absent today from the Board’s regularly scheduled business meeting, however; Mr. Guessford’s personal Facebook account shows him checking into the Chesapeake Bay Bridge some 45 minutes before today’s Board began.

Earlier today, Mr. Guessford also used his personal Facebook page to check in at The Dough Roller, an essential Ocean City restaurant, for breakfast.

After thoroughly analyzing Mr. Guessford’s Board of Education ethics disclosure forms, dating from the time he took office in December 2014 to September 2015 (said ethics disclosure forms are made public), I discovered a number of oversights and irregularities contained within Mr. Guessford disclosures. I performed an exhaustive analysis of Guessford’s ethics forms and relayed my findings not only to Washington County Public Schools, but I also hand delivered my research and analysis to the Herald-Mail, with the expectation that the newspaper would perform its own independent analysis.

As the original complainant, I submitted an ethics complaint on September 23, 2015, detailing a long list of ethical violations found in Mr. Guessford’s ethics disclosure forms. My complaint regarding Guessford’s ethics disclosure form was forwarded on to Washington County Public Schools’ independent Ethics Panel. Subsequent my initial complaint, Andrew Nussbaum, a Maryland attorney, sent me a signed letter that included an Ethics Complaint Reporting Form. I signed the form, filed it and swore, under oath, that my complaint was factual.

Below is Nussbaum’s November 16, 2015 letter to me:

Please read the Ethics Panel findings below:

Mike Guessford Ethics Violations, Part 1

Opinion and Order 01,2016

Stay tuned for an in-depth, detailed report on Guessford’s ethical violations…