Starving Ethics Commissions of Resources - The Situation in Oklahoma

Money is not only the root of much of the evil in government ethics, it is also the lifeblood of government ethics. Without money, ethics commissions, at least in cities and states, as opposed to towns, cannot do their job.

Do something the legislative body doesn't like and it has a good way to get back at you: cut off your funds or fail to fund your new obligations. At budget time, government ethics commissions, no matter how independent, often become just another political football.

This seems to be the story in Oklahoma. There appears to be no dispute over the fact that the Ethics Commission is underfunded. It still has the same staff total as it did when it was set up in 1991, and the EC feels it was underfunded then. It can only afford one investigator, and its duties include campaign finance as well as ethics.

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According to an AP article, it appears to be campaign finance rules that have enraged the legislature: cutting by two-thirds the amount of money lobbyists can spend on legislators, and preventing PACs from transferring their funds to other PACs. There also appear to have been some recent or ongoing investigations of legislators.

The Oklahoma EC did get a $150,000 increase for next year, but the legislature will not allow it to hire an additional employee with this money. The legislature cannot tell the EC how to spend its money, but it must authorize new hiring. The EC wants $238,000 more.

The EC first tried to reach an agreement with the governor and legislature, and then when that failed, it tried to get the legislature to have a special session to approve an increase in funding. But that too seems to have failed, according to an article on the KTEN-TV site.  Common Cause threw its support behind getting additional funding.

According to a press release yesterday, the EC will seek a supplemental appropriation from the Contingency Review Board (Governor and legislative leaders) to exhaust its non-litigation remedies.

The state constitution mandates that the EC be properly funded, so the EC has directed its staff to prepare legal papers for a lawsuit against the legislature. The EC is an independent constitutional body and not a state agency. In fact, it can promulgate ethics rules, which the legislature may disapprove (and the governor can veto such disapproval).

In its second year of existence, the EC sued the legislature, because the legislature disapproved its ethics rules and passed its own, which could not be enforced by the EC. The cause of action was usurpation of constitutional authority, and the State Supreme Court found for the EC. The EC also sued for insufficient funding, but the Supreme Court said it could not make a determination of what sufficient funding constitutes, and the EC did not pursue this issue at the district court level.

Things are not rosy in Oklahoma, ethically speaking. Last week the State Auditor and Inspector (an independent, elected official) and his wife were convicted on counts of conspiracy and accepting bribes, according to an AP article.  Just last year, the Auditor evaluated the EC's own internal controls. If this conviction didn't get the legislature's attention, I don't know what will.

Funding has been a principal way for state legislatures and city councils to punish ethics commissions. The Center for Public Integrity did a survey of state ethics commissions in 2001, and 10 said that this had been a problem. Here are the survey numbers. Other favorite forms of punishment include pushing out the executive director, getting rid of the commission, and taking away its authority over legislators (which Louisiana just did with its successful suit).

For more background info, see this article in the Daily Oklahoman. Here is the EC's June 13 letter to the Governor.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics