Nominations for Worst Texas Commission of the Decade. The TEC

Previous Nominations:
Texas Residential Construction Commission
Texas Department of Insurance

The Texas Ethic Commission, created in 1991, is responsible for enforcing ethics laws, and like the TDI and the TRCC should be in line to receive the Worst Texas Commission of the Decade. It is unfortunate because just when the TEC begins to get tough and levies the largest fine in its history against Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole, it dismisses a complaint against State Senator Jane Nelson for spending $200,000 of her donors money on a condo.

Give Credit Where Credit is Due
Over the last few years the TEC has issued record fines, has issued alerts on the proper way to file reports, and has created detailed limits on what can be purchased with their donors money. But let's give credit where credit is due. The only reason the TEC has done anything proactive is because a small group of volunteers across Texas audited two years of campaign reports, filed valid complaints, and documented the complaints in the media and blogs. This is the only reason the TEC has taken any action whatsoever.

The Audits
A report titled Don't Mess with Ethics identified over $3 million in undisclosed expenditures by 95 Legislators as well as spending their donors money to buy condos, memberships to exclusive golf courses, and paying family members for personal services. This small group of volunteers did the job  the 37 employees of the $2 Million/year TEC should have done.

Because of this audit, the violations have stopped. Hiding campaign expenditures behind credit cards has been reduced from nearly $1 Million to a few thousand dollars. Condo purchases have stopped. Personal use of donors money has stopped. Since this audit other organizations have taken over as watchdogs of financial reports.

TEC hasn't done enough
According the the TEC 2010 budget, over $500,000 a year is spent on enforcement while only a fraction ($40,000) is spent on education and prevention of ethics violations. This is probably self serving. If the ethics complaints would stop because the ethics violations were prevented, what would they do with the staff and their $500,000 salaries?

This is where the TEC has failed. As part of the audit the TEC was provided a list of common sense methods to prevent the ethics violations, therefore preventing an investigation and public embarrassment of the elected officials, but the TEC has refused to act on them. They can levy hefty fines on the individual instead of on the campaign, but they don't. They can invest in filing software that performs automatic audits of a campaign report much like Turbo Tax does, but they haven't. They can perform a simple audit much like the group of citizens did, but they won't.

To make matters worse, a bill to reform the Commission was defeated in 2009, but a bill to actually protect elected officials from ethics complaints was signed into law. Go figure.

They Deserve the Nomination
Because of this and the recent dismissal of the complaint against State Senator Jane Nelson  the TEC is qualified to be nominated as the Worst Texas Commission of the Decade. Look for a detailed post about Senator Nelson's situation in 2010.