HRES310JUN17

TheWeekInCongress.com

Week Ending June 17, 2005

House Resolution 310 raising a question of privileges of the House.

BRIEF

The House of Representatives has a Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. One responsibility of the Committee is to research or investigate complaints or concerns about House members who may have been behaving in conflict with those standards of conduct.

When the House convened for the 109^th Congress the Majority made a few rule changes that concerned the Minority because it appeared that the Committee could avoid an investigation by simply doing nothing to pursue the matter.

The Majority, a few weeks later reestablished the rules for that Committee to the earlier status and all seemed well.

However, the expected investigations (probably into Members accepting travel stipends in a fashion that appeared to be intended to influence their vote) have not begun.

In recent press interviews it has been noted that the delay in investigations and Committee business in general is due to the inability of the Committee Chairman to assign a staff member to manage the investigation.

Enter this Resolution. Committee staff must be elected by the Committee members as professional non-partisan staff and are “prohibited from engaging in `any partisan political activity directly affecting any congressional or presidential election’.”

Committee members, however, can appoint a member of their own staff to serve the Committee and they do not have to be non-partisan and are not voted on. All still seemed well.

But in January the Committee Chairman fired the non-partisan staff, the Resolution preamble said and said that the current Chairman wants to assign his own (partisan) staff member to supervise the staff and wants to do so without a Committee vote. All is no longer well, the Resolution indicates.

The selection of this staff supervisor would appear to violate the 1997 rules of the Committee and, the preamble said, the absence of a staff leader leaves the Committee unable to carry out its responsibilities to perform the investigation and has brought public ridicule and discredit to the House.

The Resolution would direct the Committee to adhere to its guidelines and hire a non-partisan staff to replace the one recently discharged.

Sponsor: Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-8^th)

Vote: The House tabled the measure 219 to 199 (RC 140) (June 9, 2005) {Editor’s note: This Resolution passed during the week ending Jun10 but the text was not available by press time.}

Cost to the taxpayers: No discernible cost.

MORE INFORMATION

Whereas, in 1968, in furtherance of its constitutional authority and to promote the highest ethical standards for Members of Congress, the House of Representatives established the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct;

Whereas the ethics procedures in effect during the 108th Congress, and in the three preceding Congresses, were enacted in 1997 in a bipartisan manner by an overwhelming vote of the House of Representatives upon the bipartisan recommendation of the ten-member Ethics Reform Task Force, which conducted a thorough and lengthy review of the entire ethics process;

Whereas rule XI, clause 3(g) of the Rules of the House, first adopted in 1997 upon the recommendation of the task force, provides that the Committee `staff be assembled and retained as a professional non-partisan staff' and `[a]ll staff members shall be appointed by an affirmative vote of the majority of the Members of the Committee';

Whereas rule XI states that each such staff person `shall be professional and demonstrably qualified for the position which he is hired' and is prohibited from engaging in `any partisan political activity directly affecting any congressional or presidential election';

Whereas rule XI also provides that, `in addition to any other staff provided by law, rule or other authority', the Chair and Ranking Minority Member may each appoint, without a vote of the Committee, one person as a shared staff member from his or her personal staff to perform service for the Committee; and further provides such shared staff persons are exempt from the provision requiring that `the staff be assembled and retained as a professional, nonpartisan staff' and the provision stating that `no member of the staff shall engage in any partisan political activity directly affecting any congressional or presidential election';

Whereas, from 1997 through 2004, the Staff Director/Chief Counsel and other professional staff were appointed by an affirmative vote of a majority of the members of the Committee, and the shared staff members exercised no supervisory or other authority over the professional staff;

Whereas, in January of 2005, the Chairman of the Committee improperly and unilaterally fired nonpartisan Committee staff;

Whereas the Chairman now proposes to designate his shared staff person as the Committee Staff Director, clothed with supervisory authority, without subjecting him to a vote of the Committee;

Whereas, because of the Chairman's proposal and with nearly half of the First Session of the 109th Congress having expired, the Committee has been unable to carry out its charge, set out in rule XI, to investigate allegations of misconduct by Members and staff; and

Whereas the Committee's resulting inability to carry out its duties has subjected the House to public ridicule and produced contempt for the ethics process, thus bringing discredit to the House: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is hereby directed to proceed in accord with clause 3(g) of rule XI, to appoint, upon an affirmative vote of the majority of the Members of the Committee, a non-partisan professional staff.

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