Former EC Members Can Help By Filing Complaints

Since most local ethics commissions do not have the authority to initiate their own investigations or draft their own complaints (although in many cases this authority is not expressly withheld), there is a special role that former EC members, especially chairs, can play:  filing complaints that no one else will file.

According to a Santa Fe Reporter blog post this week, a former chair of the city's Ethics and Campaign Review Board filed a complaint against a mayoral candidate participating in that city's public campaign financing program, as well as against four PACs which supported the mayor's candidacy but, according to the complaint (attached; see below), were not acting fully independently.

Whether or not this complaint will be successful (the complainant admits that an investigation is required to be certain of the extent of collaboration with the mayoral campaign), it does point to conduct that is very dangerous to a public campaign financing program. Therefore, it is valuable to have this issue discussed and for the board to draw clear lines. Since such programs limit a campaign's expenditures, external groups can far outspend candidates. It is difficult to constitutionally limit such expenditures, but it is possible to prevent them from collaborating with the campaigns they support.

It is good that someone who understands the public financing program remains sufficiently devoted to it that he went to the bother of drafting such a complaint. It is a valuable role for former EC members to play.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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