Washington – Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar is joining the Senate’s Ethics Committee, just as ethical transgressions and calls for reform become a major congressional issue.
“The ethics compliance of people in the United States Senate is important because it has to do with the heart of integrity of government,” Salazar said.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid asked Salazar, a fellow Democrat, to take the post, saying his temperament and skills as a former state attorney general make him well suited for the job.
The six-member committee – three Democrats and three Republicans – will be faced with enforcing any new ethics guidelines the Senate passes. Both Republicans and Democrats propose tightening rules for accepting gifts and interaction with lobbyists in the wake of the investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Many senators have avoided the committee because it requires them to scrutinize the behavior of colleagues and risk their wrath if the committee censures a colleague. It also can put them at risk with voters if they are perceived as treating too gently someone whose ethical breaches become public.
But Salazar said he didn’t hesitate when asked to join.
“I’ll do what’s right,” he said. “That’s what will guide me in my actions on the committee.”
In reality, facing the ire of other senators has not been much of an issue for the committee because it has not been aggressive in the past, said Craig Holman, campaign-finance lobbyist for Public Citizen, the Ralph Nader-created watchdog group.
“Both (the Senate and House) ethics committees have done exceedingly poor jobs at monitoring ethics behavior of all members and at keeping records of this sort of information,” he said. “They are institutions that are under the control of the members themselves. They are the only ones watching, and if they don’t want to catch themselves, they’re not going to.”
As chief legal counsel for then-Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, Salazar wrote the ethics code for the state government’s executive branch. As state attorney general, he also dealt with ethical issues.
