House Democrats have submitted the names of their appointees to serve on the board of a key congressional ethics office, according to a person granted anonymity to share the development.
It’s an important step in the process of getting the Office of Congressional Conduct, formerly known as the Office of Congressional Ethics, up and running.
The nonpartisan independent entity — established in 2008 to receive outside referrals of ethics allegations against House members and staff, investigate the charges and pass along credible complaints to lawmakers — has been lapsed since the start of the new Congress. The board of the office needs to be populated by six members, evenly divided between the two parties, though it can operate with as few as four members, as stipulated by official rules.
Speaker Mike Johnson also must formally approve all board picks to reconstitute the office for the 119th Congress — but so far, he hasn't selected his people, said another person granted anonymity to speak freely.
Johnson's spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about his intentions, though Republicans have, since the office's founding, been deeply critical of its function and numerous times have sought to cut its funding through the appropriations process.
In a sign of how the GOP might be looking for new ways to hamstring the entity, House Republicans under Johnson's leadership took steps at the beginning of this Congress to change the operations of the office, with the rules package resulting in a name change for the body and requiring the board to come together before the professional staff could be formally appointed. Previously, the staff could operate immediately after the House adopted its rules.
In the meantime, the Office of Congressional Conduct has not been able to launch any new investigations, which is troubling to former Rep. David Skaggs, a Colorado Democrat who for years held leadership roles with the office.
“The internal House Ethics Committee needed to be, if you will, prompted to do its work,” recalled Skaggs, of the reason for forming the office. “So OCE — OCC — serves as that necessary prompt.”
The nonpartisan office has taken on sensitive investigations into Hill ethics issues as of late; notably, its report on Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) recently became public and revealed potential contracts Mills held with the federal government while serving as a member of Congress.
The House has been slow in constituting its internal Ethics Committee, too. Members were only formally appointed in mid-March, and the evenly divided panel is still straining to get out from under the saga that erupted at the end of the last Congress over its handling of an investigation into then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
