EDITORIAL: Civil Rights Commission must prioritize ethics
May 3—In June, the Indiana Civil Rights Commission, a state agency assigned to ensure Indiana's civil rights laws are enforced, will hold its annual conference at the Crowne Plaza hotel in downtown Indianapolis.
Currently, its agenda has no one speaking on the personal and administrative ethics needed to effectively run a taxpayer-funded anti-discrimination agency.
Perhaps such a speaker should be added. But don't ask anyone working in the ICRC to speak on the issue.
In recent years, the ICRC has become a place where staff and commissioners don't adhere to contract requirements, where employees had conflicts of interests with outside activities and where staffers received personal benefits through the commission's sponsorship of events such as entertainment and sports.
The Indiana Office of the Inspector General has been investigating the commission's potential ethics violations since 2019. It issued a confidential memo listing seven corrective recommendations to ICRC in 2021.
In April, the inspector general issued a scathing public report in hopes that the Civil Rights Commission and other state agencies would comply with federal and state contract requirements and Indiana's conflict-of-interest provisions.
No criminal activity was found at ICRC.
Many of the concerns are serious. An ICRC employee may have violated the state's conflict of interest statute by serving on the board of directors for an outside agency that had received state funds from the ICRC. The incident was discovered in November yet a disclosure statement had not been filed by April.
The report noted, "It should not take a state employee or special state appointee five months to file a disclosure statement."
Such indolence should not happen with a state office assigned to quickly and thoroughly address discrimination and one that has the power to uphold monetary judgments against companies, housing providers and others.
For some Hoosiers, the inspector general's 16-page report could bring into question past ICRC decisions.
The initial confidential report led to a follow-up, questionnaire-based investigation initiated by the inspector general's office in November.
After two requests for extra time, the ICRC filed its answers Feb. 28. Not satisfied with those answers, the inspector general sent more questions in March. The ICRC's last response came April 6. In turn, the latest report listed five recommendations for the commission.
For one, employees with a possible conflict must file a disclosure statement.
Concerning ticket distributions, ICRC now uses a standardized form to be signed by employees. But the latest inspector general's report found that some of the signatures didn't match the same employee's signatures on other documents.
Indiana's Office of the Inspector General must continue to push the ICRC to abide by the proper procedures for state and federal contracts and grants and for sponsoring events. Ethical office practices must become an administrative mandate.
Gov. Eric Holcomb, who is set to honor six African Americans in July at an ICRC-sponsored dinner, appoints the seven members of the commission, which determines whether a practice is discriminatory. He should take the lead on correcting the agency's inability to run an ethical operation.
Staffers at the civil rights commission have appeared to be ignorant of their own ethical rules.
They aren't committing discriminatory acts against Hoosiers, but they have been taking advantage of their position and their office.
