Nate Monroe: State legislation would turn local ethics watchdogs into 'lap dogs'

COMMENTARY | Florida lawmakers are considering far-reaching legislation that would weaken an already beleaguered state ethics commission and would virtually wipe away the power of local ethics watchdogs to investigate and enforce laws intended to fight corruption. The legislation could make local ethics officials "lap dogs instead of watchdogs," said Kirby Oberdorfer, the director of Jacksonville's Office of Ethics, Compliance and Oversight.

A last-minute amendment to a broader ethics bill, filed Wednesday by state Sen. Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, would strip away the power of local ethics commissions to initiate their own investigations into potential problems, which are often based on anonymous or informal tips as well as information uncovered by local media. In other words, an ethics official's mere knowledge of potential lawbreaking would no longer be enough for that official to begin an investigation.

If the Senate bill becomes law, investigations at the state and local level could only be prompted by a signed and sworn complaint from someone who possesses "personal knowledge" of a potential violation. The complainer's identity would be made public after a commission had determined whether probable cause exists to move forward, prompting additional concerns that the new restrictions would have a chilling effect on people's willingness to report wrongdoing in local government.

After a short discussion about Burgess' late-hour amendments, the Senate on Thursday passed the bill 39-0. There is a related bill in the House, due for committee hearings, that doesn't include Burgess' changes.

The inability to initiate an investigation on its own was once described as the state commission's "greatest weakness," and one its staff unsuccessfully lobbied state lawmakers to change years ago.

Now, state lawmakers might be importing that weakness into local governments across Florida, and they would be making it worse by restricting which kinds of complaints could prompt investigations. In Jacksonville, for example, the vast majority of issues the ethics office vets come from anonymous or informal tips.

"It would change the way we've done business since the 1990s," said Jose Arrojo, executive director of the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, which, like its Jacksonville counterpart, possesses the power to initiate its own investigations.

Burgess described his amendments as ways of ensuring due process for accused public officials and preventing "forum shopping" of complaints: if the state doesn't allow anonymous complaints, a local ethics commission shouldn't either. "We want to be consistent," Burgess said during floor debate on his amendments Thursday.

Taken together, the changes would essentially force local ethics commissions to mirror their state counterpart, an agency already viewed as ineffectual, and would impose significant new hurdles before ethics staffers could begin looking into a potential problem. "Unfortunately, Florida does not have the best reputation in actually fighting for ethics," said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando. "(The state commission has) a very slow moving process and it's not one people have a lot of trust in."

Ethics officials across Florida were still trying to determine the precise impact the changes would have on their offices, but it's already clear the implications are almost existential. "It would completely gut our enforcement function," Arrojo said.

Requiring signed, sworn complaints of "personal knowledge" of wrongdoing would render ethics officials almost powerless in most cases to address potential problems. It's also not clear what constitutes "personal knowledge" of a potential ethical violation. Interpreted narrowly, that requirement could make it almost impossible to report even flagrant wrongdoing.

One ethics official I spoke with who has concerns about the legislation noted that "people don't commit ethics violations and then invite someone in to witness them."

Burgess expressed concerns about due process for accused public officials, but his legislation vastly overcorrects for a virtually non-existent problem. In Jacksonville, for example, from 2015 through 2023, the office received 53 complaints based on anonymous or informal tips. Of those, the commission's complaints committee recommended only 12 for "self-initiation" — a finding that there was enough evidence of potential wrongdoing to move forward with an investigation. Of those 12, the commission only moved forward with two of them.

Both of those complaints were related to a fall 2017 traffic stop during which the driver, then-City Council member Reggie Gaffney, criticized Jacksonville Sheriff's Office officers for pulling him over and sought intervention from high-ranking officials in the department, an interaction that was caught on video and quickly generated controversy. If the Senate bill were to become law, the Jacksonville commission would have been unable to investigate the incident unless the officers who actually pulled Gaffney over had filed a signed, sworn complaint about his behavior that day. Who else could attest to having "personal knowledge" about the interaction?

"This is a solution for which there is no problem, at least in Jacksonville," Oberdorfer, the city ethics director, said.

She said the last-minute amendments, which skipped the normal committee hearing process, deprived the legislature from hearing from experts who could have communicated the "harm the bill may cause anti-corruption and transparency efforts."

Nate Monroe is a metro columnist whose work regularly appears every Thursday and Sunday. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Nate Monroe: Florida bill would weaken local ethics officials