Pelosi has yet to appoint members to outside ethics board

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has yet to reappoint members to an outside ethics board she created, fueling speculation that internal Democratic Caucus opposition is causing the delay, according to several House aides and sources familiar with the matter.

Pelosi created the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) in 2008 to help burnish the House’s tarnished reputation for policing its own members’ activity for corruption and conflicts of interest after the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

{mosads}At the time, Pelosi encountered strong opposition within her caucus to handing control of any part of the ethics process to a board made up of non-members, but she pushed through the proposal anyway, arguing that House Democrats needed to follow through on a 2006 campaign promise to run the most ethical Congress in history.

Since then, members of Congress, including many Democrats, have chafed at the OCE’s aggressive actions against members of Congress. The OCE has investigated more than 60 cases and referred a dozen to the House ethics committee for further review.

If the delay continues for too long, one source worried, progress on investigations wld be delayed and staff and board members might not be able to be paid for January. 

Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The OCE has no subpoena power and can only make recommendations to the full ethics committee panel, composed of sitting lawmakers, for further review. Still, the extent and level of ethics scrutiny the OCE has brought is unprecedented in the House, and several targets of the probes, many of them in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and other critics on both sides of the aisle have complained that Pelosi created an entity that has overreached and is out of control.

CBC members have introduced legislation that would curtail the powers of the OCE, and watchdog groups have roundly condemned the proposed modifications and praised the OCE for restoring some credibility to the House ethics process.

Many outside ethics watchdogs expected Republicans to try to gut the OCE at the beginning of their majority control this Congress because the office was not set up as a permanent fixture of the House and requires reauthorization at the beginning of each Congress. But Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) kept the OCE intact and has reappointed each of the four GOP board members, led by former Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), he selected to serve on the board, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Pelosi, however, has not reappointed her slate of OCE board members, led by former Rep. David Skaggs (D-Colo.), the board’s chairman. Some Democratic members targeted by OCE probes have complained that Skaggs has acted too aggressively and has treated the OCE as a prosecution team.

Pelosi also is having trouble convincing Democrats to remain on the full ethics committee after a turbulent year marked by partisan sniping, missteps and feuding over the public trials of Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has reluctantly agreed to remain as the top Democrat on the panel but asked Pelosi to find a replacement if she could as soon as possible. Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) also has publicly said he no longer wants to serve on the committee, nor does he believe it can be taken seriously, after such a rocky year, in its current constitution.

Butterfield advocated a complete overhaul and the appointment of all new members to the evenly divided committee. Instead, Boehner reappointed the Republicans who served last year and tapped Rep. Jo Bonner (Ala.), the top Republican on the panel for the last two years, to chair it.

As of Tuesday night, the committee’s website listed only Republicans on its roster. The Democratic side of the roster remained empty.