State ethics panel gets first big vote wrong

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The state Ethics Commission didn’t take long to disappoint — or to show that most of its members are driven by politics more than fairness.

The commission, in its first high-profile vote last week, sided with more money in politics. In fact, the commissioners are going to be providing those dollars out of their own pockets.

The Ethics Commission voted 4-2 against a ban on members giving campaign donations to the same politicians they are supposed to police.

We already knew that most of the commissioners would be loyal to the top lawmakers who appointed them to the commission. The weak and politically connected commission replaced the much stronger and nonpartisan Government Accountability Board on June 30.

But by allowing commissioners to donate to political campaigns, the new commission is further harming its public image. It isn’t even trying to appear fair and impartial when enforcing ethics, lobbying and campaign finance laws.

Credit commissioner Pat Strachota, a former Republican Assembly majority leader, for getting it right. She favored a ban on campaign donations along with commissioner Robert Kinney, a Democrat and former Oneida County circuit judge.

State law forbids staff members for the Ethics Commission from donating to political candidates and causes. The retired judges who sat on the former Government Accountability Board also refrained from giving money to politicians.

Similarly, sitting judges and judicial candidates are barred from making or soliciting contributions in support of a political party’s causes or candidates.

So Strachota assumed a similar rule would apply to her as a commissioner in charge of overseeing the ethical behavior of candidates.

That makes good sense. And Kinney agreed.

“We have, right now, people claiming that elections are rigged,” Kinney said. “We don’t want to create a situation where there’s less confidence in government, less confidence in fairness, less confidence in nonpartisanship.”

Unfortunately, that already happened when the Republican-run Legislature disbanded an independent GAB in late June. The GAB had been carefully insulated from partisan politics and had the power to launch investigations without lawmakers’ approval.

The much weaker Ethics Commission is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of top politicians and the governor. To investigate lawmakers, it has to ask potentially the very same lawmakers for money to fund the probe — a glaring impediment to accountability.

Nonetheless, Strachota and Kinney were right to try to reassure the public that the new Ethics Commission deserves a chance to show it can be fair and deserving of public confidence. Banning political donations would have been a good way to start to show its members would at least try to settle disputes in an even-handed way.

Instead, a majority of the Ethics Commission — including Peg Lautenschlager (fined a decade ago for ethical lapses after driving drunk in a state vehicle), Mac Davis, Katie McCallum and David Halbrooks — decided they can be as political and biased as they want.

It’s a sad beginning for a panel that’s supposed to rise above politics to promote the public good.