Rangel probe ups need for ethics chief

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is under pressure to name a new ethics committee chairman or risk delaying a high-profile investigation into Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y).

Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas), who had been serving as acting chairman of the ethics panel since former Chairwoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones’s (D-Ohio) death in August, was term-limited and is no longer a committee member now that the 111th Congress has begun.

{mosads}“I have served my six years and I’m now officially off,” he said with a smile. “I prefer to do more policy-oriented work.”

But Green said he’s not breathing completely easy yet. He and the ranking Republican, Rep. Doc Hastings (Wash.), who also is off the committee because of term limits, may continue to work on the Rangel investigation to provide continuity to the probe. That decision won’t be made, however, until Pelosi chooses a new ethics committee chairman as well as two additional Democrats to serve on the panel. Democratic Reps. Mike Doyle (Pa.) and Lucille Roybal Allard (Calif.) left vacancies because they too were term-limited and had served the required three terms.

It’s always difficult to find members willing to serve on the panel, whose sole purpose is to police its peers. It’s even more difficult because Rangel, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and one of the most powerful and well-liked Democrats in Congress, is the one under the microscope.

The House ethics committee ended the 110th Congress without releasing its report on Rangel even though Pelosi had said she expected it to do so.

In the past when faced with a similar situation, Green said the House has done one of two things: It has either allowed the old investigative subcommittee to pass the baton to a new subcommittee made up of new members, or it has decided to reconstitute the committee already enmeshed in the work of the investigation.

“It’s up in the air right now what’s going to happen — that’s up to the new chair,” Green said. “We’ve done a lot of work already so we’re willing to continue it — not that we wouldn’t mind leaving it to the [next panel]. But it’s a complicated investigation and we want to make sure we’re not just leaving it to others.”

Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said only: “The process is moving forward and the chairman of the committee will be named in short order.”

The ethics panel expanded its Rangel probe in late December after a report in The New York Times raised questions about a quid pro quo involving a donation to a City College of New York education center bearing Rangel’s name, and Rangel’s alleged legislative favoring of the donor.

The probe previously covered Rangel’s failure to report rental income on a Dominican Republic villa, alleged misuse of his congressional stationery for fundraising for the education center and his use of three rent-controlled New York apartments.