Paper Tigers

Local government officials often defend halfway ethics reforms by saying that they're just the beginning, and that something is better than nothing. But halfway reforms are often effectively little more than nothing, especially in the area of enforcement. "Window dressing" is one term for such reforms. "Paper tiger" is another.

And that's the term employed by Bill Pascoe in his CQ Politics column yesterday. He was writing about the new Office of Congressional Ethics, which after an eleven-year hiatus, allows citizens to file ethics complaints against House members.

But is this right to file a complaint real or just on paper? Pascoe wonders aloud that if it were real, why would Democracy 21 be calling for an investigation of Rep. John Murtha when it could just file a complaint. And he concludes that this would be meaningless, because the OCE need not investigate it (one member of each party must agree that it is warranted), and the OCE can't subpoena anyone anyway. It's not easy to investigate House members without a subpoena.

There are a lot of paper tigers in local government ethics. Toothless ethics commissions. Ethics commissions without members. Enforcement that is nearly impossible due to supermajority voting requirements, time limits on investigations and hearings, lack of subpoena power, high burdens of proof, and the like.

At first, paper tigers give the appearance that the public interest is being protected, but once they are seen for what they are, people feel conned and the goal of public trust is undermined. Paper tiger compromises in ethics reform are not good in the long run, and they are not necessarily better than nothing.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

---