Enforcement & Complaints

It's Attack the Ethics Commission week once again, this time in New York State. According to an April 16 article in the Albany Times-Union, a mayor from one party filed a complaint against the deputy majority leader of the New York Senate, who is a member of the other party. The complaint is included below the article, and a statement by the mayor, about the filing, is quoted.

A few issues arise in the case of a Pennsylvania state senator who reached a settlement this week with the state's ethics commission that included a fine of $21,000, according to an article in yesterday's Montgomery County Times Herald.

A few days too late for St. Patrick's Day, today's Irish Examiner has a wonderful story about catching officials involved in ethical misconduct relating to land use. It's an old story, but new to me, and probably new to you, as well.

Here's the situation. There is a state ethics program that applies to local governments, and an ethics issue relating to a local law arises. There is no local ethics commission to enforce the local law, so what happens?

Imagine this story. A mayor calls a group of local contractors and developers to a closed meeting on furthering economic growth in the city. The guests are given a welcome pack, and in the welcome pack is a plain brown, unmarked envelope. The mayor ran on a platform of stopping corruption, but the contractors and developers have seen this happen before. Politicians are all the same, they think.

Did you know that the District of Columbia has its own Speech or Debate Clause? I learned this from reading the Motion for a Protective Order on Behalf of Mayor Vincent C. Gray filed on Thursday in the case of Payne v. District of Columbia. Gray, a former council president, is seeking to be protected from testifying in a case involving alleged retaliation against a whistleblower.

The way elected officials often think about government ethics enforcement, it's almost as if they weren't being investigated and given a hearing, but were being stoned. And in a certain sense, that is what is happening.

It's important for ethics commissions to be prepared for the occasional official who, along with his or her attorney, will do anything to stop or at least delay its investigation, including attacks on the EC itself. A good example of how relentless an official can be is John J. O'Connor, now former head of the SUNY Research Foundation, whom I wrote about in a recent blog post.

Needless to say, last week's oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Carrigan v. Nevada Commission on Ethics case, which I have been following over the past year, was the last oral argument of the term. Was this putting local government ethics in the caboose or saving the best for last?

Update: September 17, 2011 (see below)

An article in yesterday's Stamford Advocate keeps asking the question, Who should pay? The article is referring to attorney's fees related to an ethics proceeding. Most ethics codes do not deal with this issue, and therefore it often turns into a big political controversy after the fact, leaving a bad taste in citizens' mouths, especially if they are forced to foot the bill.