To the Editor:

The recent decision by the Ethics Commission to impose a 90-day moratorium on ethics complaints during election season is antithetical to sound policy and judgment. The alleged motivation, concern over politically motivated filings, rings hollow when it now means that the commission has effectively precluded itself from doing its job.

Commission member Timothy Murphy openly admitted that there wasn’t any data from the past ten years to indicate that this was a significant issue, so why now? Why abstain from responsibility to provide transparency at the critical juncture of public policy that is an election? Why shouldn’t the commission use its resources to investigate issues and, if they are found to have merit, use what power it has to act in the public interest?

Further, if complaints are indeed found to be frivolous and purely of political expedience, the code of ethics that the commission itself is intended to enforce stipulates against such frivolity. In other words, it already has the means by which to deal with the issue supposedly being solved by this moratorium. It’s bad enough that the ethics commission was stripped of its power to hold state legislators accountable to the public interest. It’s even worse that the commission itself, already somewhat toothless, has effectively resigned itself to a non-entity during elections. Wouldn’t the public be better served, by identifying unethical behavior when there is a chance to get those committing breaches of public trust out of office, rather than dealing with lengthy impeachment proceedings or other more costly avenues?

At a time when we should be putting more power into the ethics commission, specifically created to maintain ethical behavior in our elected bodies across the state, we can ill afford to see its members recuse themselves from their critical role in policing our politicians. We must maintain a high expectation for ethical conduct. We must strengthen our resolve to maintain independent non-partisan means of enforcement of ethical standards.

Tanios Elie BouRamia

Democratic Candidate

Ward 1