The Roundhouse in Santa Fe. (Photo by Peter St. Cyr)
“When the penalties for breaching confidentiality are much stiffer than the ethics violation itself… that’s cause for sending this back to the drafting table,” key activist says
Members of the Senate Finance Committee unanimously approved a proposal to create a state ethics commission this evening, but not before stripping funding for the proposal.
That isn’t the only sign that the legislation is, at best, on life support. Activist groups that have been pushing for the creation of an ethics commission released a statement late today taking issue with key and contentious provisions in the proposals that have emerged in the Senate and House.
And the clock is running out on Senate Bill 43, which now heads to the Senate floor, and House Bill 43, which is awaiting a hearing on the House floor. The session ends at noon Thursday.
Stripping funding from a bill doesn’t necessarily make it worthless. The Legislature could create an ethics commission this year but not give it the funding to get started with its work until a future year.
But the lack of support for the current bills from activists who have worked on the proposal for years could halt what little momentum there was for approving the proposal.
At issue are secrecy provisions
At issue are secrecy provisions in the bills. Under the current legislation, a person who files a complaint and then talks publicly about it could be hit with a civil fine of up to $26,000 and a year in jail. But, the activists point out in a news release, “Ironically, a public official, public employee or lobbyist found to have actually committed an ethics violation in betrayal of the public trust would only receive a public reprimand from the ethics commission.”
“It’s odd that the penalties for a complainant speaking publicly about a complaint would be astronomically harsher than any penalty the commission could dish out to a public official accused of misconduct,” Common Cause New Mexico Executive Director Steven Robert Allen said in a news release from the activists.
Most of the groups raising concerns believe that the establishment of a strong, independent ethics commission is long overdue in New Mexico, the release states. New Mexico is one of a handful of states without such a body, and they said the state needs a bipartisan commission to field and investigate ethics complaints against public officials and serve in an advisory capacity on ethical issues.
“An ethical government is essential to creating jobs. Businesses want to locate and grow in a place where good policy trumps good politics,” Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Terri Cole said in the news release. “The ethics commission legislation before us falls short of that goal.”
“When the penalties for breaching confidentiality are much stiffer than the ethics violation itself, as is the case in this bill, that’s cause for sending this back to the drafting table,” Cole said.
Meetings, hearings, most documents would remain secret
The groups also took issue with the fact that the bills would require that nearly all commission meetings, the entire hearing process and almost all records of the commission’s work would remain secret. The only documents that would be required to be released by the commission would advisory opinions, the final reports on investigations that result in a guilty finding and an annual report.
“Our sunshine laws and policies start from the presumption that government must be open by default, with any secrecy provisions carved out as narrowly as possible,” New Mexico Foundation for Open Government Executive Director Sarah Welsh said in the release. “This bill takes the opposite approach.”
“It starts from the presumption that all commission documents, meetings and hearings related to ethics complaints must be secret, forever. It then carves out a narrow exception for one final report to be made public,” Welsh said. “I still haven’t heard a good explanation for why an ethics body needs such extraordinary secrecy privileges, and I don’t think the public will trust its pronouncements without more transparency.”
The other groups joining Common Cause, the chamber and FOG in opposing the current version of the proposal are the AARP and League of Women Voters.