Shays, Meehan Lead Push for Congressional Ethics Reform
By Adam Kredo
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 – In 1994 Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, took a bold bipartisan stand when he and Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., proposed sweeping campaign finance reform legislation in Congress. In 2002, their joint effort to restrict unregulated “soft money” contributions became law.
Now, Shays and Meehan are again uniting to press for an overhaul of Congress’s ethics rules and practices.
Last week, they filed legislation that would reform the congressional ethics process by establishing an independent Office of Public Integrity that would oversee ethics concerns for both the House and the Senate.
“The American people need to be able to trust that our government is run ethically,” Shays said in a press release. “Recent scandals have eroded that trust, and creating an Office of Public Integrity is an important step to regain it.”
The new office would consolidate several responsibilities currently handled by the House and Senate Ethics Committees, but it would not eliminate the need for the committees. Instead, the office would act as a prosecutor for the two committees and as “a clearing house for allegations” against members and lobbyists, Shays’ office said.
The committees would continue to be the judges, making decisions about members’ ethics practices
“Really, what Congress should do is not do the investigating and the prosecuting, if necessary, but should be the judge,” Shays said in an interview Wednesday. “It should just have to decide whether the information provided by the professional staff merits action and, if so, what kind of action.”
If his proposal is adopted, he said, “the system will work better. It’ll be more honest. I think it will be more responsive, actions will be taken more quickly and people can feel comfortable that legitimate claims will be investigated.”
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has proposed a similar version of the bill in the Senate.
Fred Wertheimer, president and CEO of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocate of congressional campaign and ethics reform, said in an interview that “the process for overseeing and enforcing ethics rules in Congress is completely broken.” He said this is particularly true in the House, saying that the House Ethics Committee (formally, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct) did not function at all during 2005.
“This is a tough issue because members of Congress don’t like to investigate each other,” Wertheimer said. He added that one of the biggest problems for the ethics process is getting an inquiry started. For him, this “is one of the great advantages” of the proposed office.
The Office of Public Integrity would allow anybody to initiate the investigative process by filing a complaint, according to the bill. The director of the office would then present evidence to the Ethics Committee, allowing its members to determine whether a case is credible and worthy of further investigation.
” If you don’t fix the enforcement system, then the new rules are liable to end up just the way the old rules did-being ignored by too many people,” Wertheimer said.
Shays, in the interview, said he agreed. One of the merits of the proposal, he said, is that “the public can hear the finding and judge for themselves. They can feel comfortable that it’s been taken outside the jurisdiction of the Republican and Democratic party.”???
Leading the office would be “a publicly credible, professionally experienced individual selected jointly by the Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress,” according to the Shays press release.
In the interview, Shays said the leaders should look for someone with “judicial skills, investigative skills, and someone who basically is not looking to have a further job in government, so that they’re not in any way inhibited by what they do in any way.”
The legislation includes several safeguards against potential partisan abuse of the system. After an investigation, if the director determines an allegation to be frivolous, he or she may prevent the complainant from ever filing again, according to a report by Shays’ office.
In addition, the Ethics Committee in each house could stop an investigation by a two-thirds vote. It would then have to issue a public report explaining why the investigation was stopped.
Aside from its prosecutorial duties, the office would provide guidance and information to members and their staffs on the permissibility of certain actions under House rules. This could include such gray areas as accepting gifts from constituents who are pleased with their representatives’ work.
The office would create an internet database in which lobbyist reports would be available for public viewing.
