House limits ethics inquiries
BOISE – The Idaho House approved new rules Tuesday that limit when legislative committees can be closed to the public but allow the majority party to squelch ethics investigations with a closed-door vote.
The new rules are part of changes the Legislature is making to specify circumstances in which committee meetings can be closed to the public and media. Newly adopted Senate rules mandate all ethics investigations be open.
House leaders decided that preliminary investigations of alleged ethics violations by legislators could be closed, but Democrats objected that the majority party could use the clause to hide its own members’ ethics violations because it has a majority on the ethics committee.
The full House approved HR3 56-12 and HR4 57-11, less than six hours after the rules moved out of the House Ways and Means Committee on 4-3 votes. All “no” votes came from Democrats.
House Assistant Minority Leader George Sayler of Coeur d’Alene said his party thought there was an agreement with the GOP to change the ethics committee membership from seven to six in order to have equal party representation.
“We had a draft copy where the language was changed,” Sayler said.
Keith Allred, president of The Common Interest and a professor at the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, missed the Ways and Means Committee meeting because it started 15 minutes ahead of schedule, unannounced.
He said he is very concerned about the majority party having control in preliminary investigations of possible ethics violations.
“It’s wrong on policy, and it’s wrong on politics” Allred said. “It creates the perception and the possibility of a party just trying to hide its own dirty laundry.”
House Speaker Bruce Newcomb of Burley told the House the rules were not mandates.
“Just because you’ve got a rule doesn’t mean that’s the way it’s going to be. This is the guideline,” Newcomb said.
New rules were necessary because on March 20, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that open meetings provisions in the Idaho Constitution were intended to apply just to general floor sessions of the Legislature, but not legislative committee meetings.
The court case had been brought by the Idaho Press Club after some committee meetings were closed in 2003 and 2004. Among those were sessions during which lawmakers negotiated a landmark water rights settlement with the Nez Perce Tribe. A judge had required those water rights sessions to be confidential.
With the new rules, closed sessions will have to be announced a day in advance. Closed committee meetings can only occur if two-thirds of the members agree. The only matters that can be discussed in closed sessions are records exempted from public disclosure, pending litigation, personnel matters, security issues such as terrorist threats and consideration of property purchases.