Let the public in on ethics probes

Ethics investigations in the General Assembly have generally been one of the best-kept secrets in the legislature. A citizen or lawmaker can file what he or she believes to be a legitimate complaint about a conflict of interest, for example, and that’s the last anyone beyond the ethics panel hears of it.

Unless the issue is one that has attracted widespread public attention, the complaint disappears into a black hole somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol.

That secrecy in the legislative good ol’ boy club will end this year if the Assembly approves a package of bills that reforms the way lawmakers deal with ethics violations. Measures offered by House Democratic leader Ward Armstrong of Henry County and Sen. Ralph Northam, D-Norfolk, would create a new five-member ethics panel. It would handle ethics complaints from both the House and the Senate.

Most importantly, the panel would conduct most of its proceedings in public, and inquiries would not expire if the legislator resigns, as is the case now.

The legislation came as a result of disclosures that former Del. Philip Hamilton, R-Newport News negotiated a job for himself at Old Dominion University while steering appropriations to the Norfolk school.

A House ethics panel was conducting a closed-door inquiry into Hamilton when his resignation brought it to a close. Hamilton resigned after losing his campaign for re-election in November. He was the ranking Republican on the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee.

At a news conference last week, Armstrong said that “with the situation with Delegate Hamilton, it became apparent to many of us that the way the General Assembly conducts its ethical reviews needed significant improvement.”

House Republicans had also expressed concern about lapses in legislative ethics inquiries after news reports about Hamilton.

Northam, who is a physician, summed up the need for stronger and more public ethics investigations when he said, “We need to assure our constituents that we do have a code of conduct, that we are policing ourselves and that we’re going to do it in a transparent manner.”

Under the Democratic bill, the five-member ethics panel would consist of one appointee each by the House and Senate majority leaders and one each by the House and Senate minority leaders. The governor would appoint the fifth member.

Once a threshold has been established that frivolous charges were not being brought against the legislator being investigated, proceedings would be conducted in public under the new bill.

Armstrong said he welcomed Republicans to sign onto the legislation, claiming it was not intended to be a partisan measure even though he had not sought GOP co-sponsors.

“Ethics and the proper conduct of the people’s business is not a Democratic cause, it’s not a Republican cause, it is a cause that all of us should embrace,” he said in floor speech.

For decades, legislators have protected one another in ethics violations — real or imagined — to the point that the investigations became a joke. That was mainly because of the cloak of secrecy they threw over the subsequent inquiry.

That will change under Armstrong’s proposal. The people will benefit from the welcome new transparency in the ethics panel proceedings.