Idea blasted as ill-advised and illegal

Ethics

late Wednesday, advocates, prosecutors and watchdog groups blasted the recommendation as ill-advised and illegal, based on the agency’s history of not aggressively pursuing ethics violations by lawmakers and top state officials.

Travis County prosecutor Gregg Cox, who heads the Public Integrity Unit, attended the commission meeting Thursday morning at the Capitol. He applauded the decision to drop the take- over of his office. “It’s a first step, a much better step than what was being proposed,” he said.

Commission Chairman Tom Ramsay, a former legislator from Mount Vernon, said the recommendation came from a subcommittee that included himself, Jim Clancy of Portland, and commissioners Paul Hobby of Houston and Hugh Akin of Dallas. They are appointed by the governor and the Legislature. He said the intent was to beef up enforcement.

Commissioner Tom Harrison of Austin sent his colleagues a letter strongly opposing the proposed change. Harrison served as the agency’s executive director from 1995 to 2002.

In the letter, Harrison said criminal investigations should be left to local prosecutors, not an agency established Capitol reporter Mike Ward has covered ethics issues at the Capitol since 1989, when he investigated trips and gift-giving by lobbyists that led to the indictment of the House speaker and eventually the creation of the Ethics Commission. to handle civil enforcement. In addition, he questioned whether a legislative agency could properly and appropriately investigate members of the Legislature and state officials — when they are appointed by the governor and legislative leaders.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it,” Harrison advised in his letter.

Even so, Untermeyer and Clancy seemed to bristle at suggestions that the ethics commission wasn’t aggressive enough in its enforcement. A state report earlier this year criticized the agency for focusing too much on minor infractions while not pursing major ethics violations.

Created in 1991 as the result of an influence-peddling scandal over lawmakers being wined and dined and taken on fancy expense-paid trips by lobbyists, the agency has struggled with how tough it should be. Legislators not wanting to empower a watchdog that might later bite them have killed several proposals in past years to give the agency more enforcement teeth.

In addition, some members in the GOP-controlled Legislature are still angry about the Public Integrity Unit’s successful prosecution of former