Ethics panel is far from ‘beyond repair’

The cumbersomely named Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission (for the sake of convenience, let’s call it the Ethics Commission, or just the Commission) is not, contrary to widespread public perception, a totally toothless agency.

According to a recent, and quite detailed, study by Common Cause titled “Ethics Reform in Georgia,” the long-embattled Commission’s problem isn’t a lack of authority. It’s a lack of adequate funding, staff and resources to exercise it.

"This report,” writes Common Cause Georgia Executive Director Brinkley Serkedakis, “demolishes the conventional notion that Georgia's ethics commission is beyond repair … states have been faced with some of the same ethics oversight challenges we've seen here in Georgia, and many have developed innovative solutions to counteract these challenges.”

The Commission’s problems aren’t new, nor are they news. It’s the deep budget cutting that many feel left the agency vulnerable to the scandals that plagued it a few years ago, and the ineffectiveness that has left it so desperately short of legal and investigative horsepower. State auditors two years ago recommended that “the General Assembly could consider changes to the Commission’s composition and funding to improve the structural independence of the body.”

Both the full report and an executive summary are available online at www.commoncause.org/ga. But here are some of the key findings:

In a large majority of the states that have ethics commissions (10 do not), members are a mixture of executive and legislative branch appointees. In more than half of those states, Common Cause found, there is also a requirement for some degree of partisan balance. Georgia requires what could technically be called “some degree” — state law requires that at least one appointee be a member of the minority party.

The report recommends a 12-member commission appointed by all three branches of state government, with stricter requirements for bipartisan representation.

The report also notes a gaping hole in campaign finance accountability. In most states the ethics commission has jurisdiction over local as well as state-level reports. But a 2013 law removed that authority from the commission.

The key recommendation, not surprisingly given Georgia’s recent history, is in the realm of funding. Common Cause notes that only three states — one of them, incidentally, is Alabama, along with California and Oregon — have ethics oversight funding that “could be considered independent and free from political machinations.”

The report recommends a constitutionally guaranteed funding formula, such as a fixed percentage of the general fund, for the ethics commission. The suggested amount is .02 percent of the budget, which would have come to about $4.3 million in FY2016.

A state whose government would earn public trust must have public accountability. This is a good formula for it. If lawmakers have a better one, let’s hear it.

This story was originally published August 10, 2016 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Ethics panel is far from ‘beyond repair’."