Jun 25, 2007 -- Reform Groups Oppose Ethics Enforcement Task Force Proposal as Not Effectively Addressing Ethics Enforcement Problems in House

In a letter sent today to House members, reform groups expressed their opposition to a proposal reportedly being considered by the House special ethics enforcement task force, which the reform groups do not believe will effectively address the ethics enforcement problems in the House.

The organizations include the Campaign Legal Center, the Committee for Economic Development, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters and Public Citizen.

The letter from the reform groups states, ''Our organizations believe it is essential for the House to establish an effective and publicly credible independent enforcement entity to assist the House Ethics Committee in enforcing the congressional ethics rules. We believe that such an entity is also necessary to help oversee and enforce the lobbying reform laws.''

The letter adds, ''The complete failure of the House Ethics Committee to carry out its responsibilities in the last Congress made clear that this is a fundamental ethics problem that has to be addressed. With the adoption this year of landmark ethics rules reforms by the House, it has become all the more essential to effectively address the ethics enforcement problem to help ensure that Members properly comply with the new ethics rules.''

According to the letter, ''We appreciate the leadership shown by Speaker Nancy Pelosi both in the passage of sweeping ethics and lobbying reforms and in taking the lead to establish a special task force to examine and address the problems with the current ethics enforcement process.''

The letter continues, ''According to various published reports, the special task force is considering a new approach to ethics enforcement that includes the establishment of a new entity to help enforce the congressional ethics rules.''

According to the letter, ''Our organizations believe, however, that the proposal reported to be under consideration by the task force does not effectively address the ethics enforcement problems in the House. We strongly oppose the task force proposal under consideration for the reasons set forth below.''

The letter states:

At the core of the longstanding problems with the House Ethics Committee has been the ability of potential ethics violations to disappear into a black hole at the Committee, without any action taken by the Committee to investigate or dismiss the matters and without any public explanation by the Committee for its actions or inaction. A classic example of this occurred in the last Congress when no investigation was ever opened by the House Ethics Committee into the Jack Abramoff corruption and lobbying scandals, the worst congressional scandals in thirty years, and no explanation was provided by the Committee for its failure to act.

Another central problem with the House ethics enforcement process has been the inherent conflict of interest in having the House Ethics Committee serve as investigator, prosecutor and judge in dealing with alleged ethics violations.

Neither of these problems is effectively addressed by the task force proposal reportedly under consideration.

According to the letter, ''Published reports indicate that the OPI to be proposed by the task force would be authorized to receive outside complaints or undertake investigations on its own initiative. The OPI would have forty-five days, to determine whether a complaint should be dismissed or sent to the Ethics Committee as unresolved.''

According to the letter, ''While the OPI could conduct an investigation during this period of time, it would not have the powers normally provided to an investigative body and needed to conduct an effective investigation.''

The letter adds:

Reports indicate that the OPI would have no subpoena power, or access to subpoena authority, and thus could not compel witnesses to testify or provide documents. The OPI also would not have the power to require witnesses to testify under oath. These powers are standard tools used by Congress and other investigative bodies to conduct investigations, and denying them to the OPI would fundamentally undermine its ability to conduct real investigations of ethics matters. In any case where witnesses choose not to testify or provide documents on a voluntary basis, the fact-finding ability of the OPI would be severely limited.

The letter states, ''In addition to the absence of real investigatory powers, the scope of OPI investigations would be very limited. The OPI could only make findings of fact, without any subpoena power, and could not provide any analysis of the ethics issues involved in the case and cannot make any recommendation that an ethics violation may have occurred that needs to be investigated by the Ethics Committee. The OPI could recommend to the Ethics Committee that a matter should be dismissed or is unresolved but could not recommend that an ethics matter needs to be investigated by the Ethics Committee.''

The letter adds, ''In other words, the OPI would have a free hand to recommend the dismissal of a complaint and would be greatly restricted in recommending anything else.''

The letter states, ''The OPI proposal also reportedly would require an organization that wanted to file an ethics complaint to disclose the contributors to the organization above a threshold amount. This is an unprecedented requirement.''

The letter continues:

There is no requirement for complainants to disclose their donors in filing a complaint in the longstanding Senate process for filing ethics complaints. Nor was there any such requirement in the former outside ethics complaint process in the House, which existed for many years until it was eliminated as part of the House 'ethics truce' in the mid-1990s. There is no requirement for disclosing contributors in any other circumstances in which outside groups deal with Congress. There is also no requirement for disclosing donors in filing FEC complaints, in requesting Justice Department criminal investigations or in requesting investigations by other federal agencies.

According to the letter, ''The OPI proposal also would do nothing to strengthen the system for enforcing the lobbying laws. The existing system for overseeing and enforcing the lobbying laws is lax and ineffective, and a new enforcement entity should have the responsibility to help enforce the lobbying laws as well as the congressional ethics rules.''

The letter states, ''Once the OPI sends a matter on to the House Ethics Committee, the existing Ethics Committee rules for dealing with ethics matters would take over and no changes would be made in those rules.''

The letter states, ''under the proposal being considered, there would continue to be no requirement for the Ethics Committee to resolve a matter formally presented to the Committee, including matters forwarded by the OPI, by either voting to open an investigative subcommittee or voting to dismiss the matter. The Ethics Committee could continue to indefinitely extend matters by votes that are not required to be made public.''

The letter states, ''Thus, the same failure that allowed the Abramoff scandals to disappear into an Ethics Committee black hole in the last Congress, without Ethics Committee members ever formally taking individual responsibility for this result, can continue to occur under the OPI process under consideration.''

According to the letter, ''Furthermore, there is nothing in the existing rules and, therefore, nothing in the new process being considered that would require the Ethics Committee to explain its actions or provide the reasons for the decisions it reaches.''

The letter states, ''Keeping in mind the past failures of the House Ethics Committee, in the end the new ethics enforcement process being considered does not provide for an independent enforcement entity with the powers to do its job, does not require the Ethics Committee to resolve matters that come before it and does not require the Ethics Committee to provide the public with the reasons for its action or inaction.''

The letter concludes, ''For the reasons set forth above, our organizations strongly oppose the proposal being considered by the special ethics enforcement task force. We believe the proposal must be revised to address the basic problems we have set forth and should not be supported by Members in its current form.''

To read the full letter, click here.