Ethics and transparency
Legislature will tackle setting up, details of a state ethics commission
SANTA FE — At the polls last fall, New Mexico voters overwhelmingly backed a constitutional amendment establishing an independent ethics commission.
Now state lawmakers are wrestling with how much of the group’s work should be public.
The amendment — which passed with 75 percent of the vote — left it to the Legislature to determine the details of how the seven-member commission would operate.
After the measure passed, a working group headed by Democratic Sen. Linda Lopez and Republican Rep. Jim Dines, both of Albuquerque, explored ways to set up the commission.
Lopez and Dines said critical questions over transparency and jurisdiction will have to be answered in the legislative session. They expected competing proposals to be introduced.
Dines, who lost his re-election bid, has pushed for lawmakers to make the commission’s work as public as possible, saying that transparency will help build public confidence in the system.
“I’ve always believed this ethics commission is a toothless tiger without as much transparency as possible,” he said during a 2018 meeting of the legislative Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee.
Dines has suggested that ethics complaints could be made public at the same time as the person’s formal response to the allegations. The proposal has the support of some good government and protransparency groups.
But several lawmakers said they are struggling with what documents should be public and when.
They fear frivolous complaints will be filed as a political weapon, they said, to damage a public official’s reputation.
Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, said professional complaints filed against lawyers and judges in New Mexico are made public only in certain circumstances.
“This is the piece that I’m weighing; I haven’t made a decision yet,” Wirth, a lawyer, said of the transparency question. But “I don’t think the Judicial Standards Commission is a toothless tiger.”
In New Mexico, complaints against lawyers are confidential unless the state Office of Disciplinary Counsel decides to proceed with allegations of attorney misconduct. Complaints against judges generally become public only if the Judicial Standards Commission files a case for discipline with the Supreme Court.
Dines, a retired lawyer with expertise in public records and open meetings laws, suggested the fears about frivolous complaints are overblown. People already can file public ethics complaints with the Secretary of State’s Office, he said.
Furthermore, he said, “trust us” isn’t usually a winning argument by government agencies that want to operate in secrecy.
“If you’re going to balance something,” Dines said, “balance it in favor of openness.”
It’s unclear who will carry the transparency torch without Dines, but the back-and forth is a preview of what will be some of the Legislature’s most critical work in the 2019 session.
The constitutional amendment adopted by voters broadly outlines the ethics commission’s composition, subpoena power and authority to issue advisory opinions. It’s also empowered to investigate and decide on complaints alleging ethical misconduct by government officials, candidates, lobbyists, contractors and employees.
But “enabling legislation,” as it’s called, is necessary to more specifically outline how the new commission will operate.
Lopez said a variety of decisions must be made— including what sorts of discipline the commission may impose and whether its jurisdiction will extend to school board members.
Other questions include how to fund the commission’s work and whether the group would hold hearings in public when evaluating ethics complaints and whether the complaints themselves would be public.
New Mexico has been one of only six states without an ethics commission.
“This is a profound change in our state,” Lopez said.
Passage of the constitutional amendment came after a series of ethics scandals rocked New Mexico in recent years, including the 2017 conviction of a former state senator on corruption charges.