[ OUR OPINION ]
Give teeth to county,
state ethics commissionsHAWAII'S Constitution provides that members of the state and county ethics commissions should be independent and impartial. However, the real decisions about whether to enforce ethical violations by elected officials and other public employees reside with the politicians, making the independence of commission members virtually meaningless. The ethics commissions need real authority to provide assurance of impartiality in responding to ethics violations and increase confidence in government.
THE ISSUE
The City Council is considering a proposal to give the city Ethics Commission the power to impose fines on ethics violators.
When former City Councilwoman Rene Mansho was caught misusing campaign funds and city staff several years ago, the state Campaign Spending Commission fined her $40,000. The city Ethics Commission found she had misspent $148,000 in city funds but it had no authority to impose a fine or demand restitution. She ended up reimbursing the city for $40,000 in wrongful expenditures and spending a year in prison after pleading guilty in court to felony theft.
All the Ethics Commission can do in such cases is recommend punitive measures against infringements of the city ethics code; the City Council has the sole authority to impose such sanctions unless criminal prosecution or other legal action is justified. Short of that, the commission is left only to issue a reprimand.
"I think there are numerous times where the remedy is somewhere between a little more than a slap on the wrist ... (and) criminal prosecution and sending somebody off to jail," says Councilman Charles Djou, sponsor of the bill to empower the Ethics Commission with the ability to fine violators. The public "perceives that there's an ethics problem going on," he correctly observes.
"There's a hole in several sanctions that the city has," says Chuck Totto, the city Ethics Commission's executive director, "and there's nothing the Ethics Commission can do itself." Most cities comparable in size to Honolulu have ethics boards empowered to assess fines, he says.
The state Constitution requires the state and each county to adopt a code of ethics and maintain a commission to administer it. The codes set standards in such areas as receiving gifts, confidential information, using positions of authority, contracts with government agencies, post-government employment, financial disclosure and lobbyist registration.
The Constitution forbids members of a commission from participating in political activities and calls for their selection "in a manner which assures their independence and impartiality." Such assurance does little good if the final word about possible ethical violations comes from politicians.
In its most recent annual report, the seven-member Honolulu commission called for "new regulatory tools to prevent and control ethics violations." The City Council and, for that matter, the state and other county ethics commissions have no valid reason for denying that power to the commissions.
