FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 11, 2005

CONTACT: Brendan Daly/Jennifer Crider 202-226-7616

Pelosi to Speaker Hastert: Ethics Committee Must Continue to Have Non-partisan Staff

Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi sent the following letter to Speaker Hastert today in response to his April 27 letter announcing the Republicans’ reversal of rules changes for the Ethics Committee. In the letter, Pelosi calls for the Ethics Committee staff to remain non-partisan. The text of the letter follows:

May 11, 2005

The Honorable J. Dennis Hastert

Speaker, United States House of Representatives

Washington, District of Columbia

Dear Mr. Speaker:

This responds to your letter of April 27th regarding the rules governing the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, and it follows up on my letter to you of April 12th on that subject. This letter has two purposes.

The first is to reiterate concerns set out in my earlier letter that you did not address in your response. Those concerns relate to the improper, unprecedented plan of Chairman Hastings to designate one of his longtime aides as staff director of the Committee. According to Ranking Member Mollohan’s briefing and to media reports, it is, at the least, unclear whether Chairman Hastings has yet renounced this plan. In view of the Committee’s anticipated workload and the current state of the Committee staff, as described in those reports, I believe this matter requires your personal attention.

The second purpose of this letter is to respond to the assertions made in your letter regarding the ethics rules changes that were included in the 109th Congress Rules Package. Although the House voted to repeal those changes, I believe it is important to state for the record that your letter does not accurately describe those changes, nor does it accurately reflect the reasons that so many Members, Democrats and Republicans, came to the conclusion that it was necessary for those rules changes to be repealed. In addition, because you released your letter publicly, your statements must not be allowed to stand un-rebutted in the public record.

The Ethics Committee Must Continue to Have a Nonpartisan Staff.

As my letter of April 12th noted, Chairman Hastings’ proposed action would be directly contrary to the requirement of the House Rules that the staff of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct “be assembled and retained as a professional, nonpartisan staff” (House Rule XI, cl. 3(g)(1)(a)). The concerns raised by his plan are particularly serious and pressing in that the Committee is now facing a heavy investigatory workload having, for all practical purposes, no investigative counsel. Clearly, hiring new counsel – which, under the rules, must be done on a bipartisan basis – cannot proceed until there is assurance that the Committee’s professional staff will continue to be a nonpartisan staff.

The basic issues here are ones with which I am personally familiar. From my service as a member of the Committee in the 1990s, I saw the key role that staff plays in the performance of the Committee’s business, and I saw as well the problems that resulted from senior staff members being appointed unilaterally by the Chairman. I was also a member of the 1997 Task Force on Ethics Reform, which focused on this problem and sought to resolve it by mandating a nonpartisan professional staff that is hired by vote of the entire Committee.

Briefly stated, the Committee on Standards can function properly only when all Committee members can have confidence that the recommendations and analyses produced by the staff are based exclusively on their professional judgment, and are not tinged with any partisan considerations. The Ethics Reform Task Force sought to achieve this end by requiring that the professional staff have a nonpartisan background and be hired by – and therefore accountable to – the Committee members of both the majority and the minority party. As the Task Force stated in its final report, “[A] nonpartisan staff is essential to engendering confidence, both within and outside the House, in the impartiality of the Committee as a whole.”

So far as I am aware, in the almost eight years that the Task Force reforms have been in place, no Chairman or Ranking Minority Member of the Committee has sought to assign a member of his personal staff Committee duties that would involve direct and ongoing involvement in the work of the nonpartisan staff. Chairman Hastings’ proposal to do so would eviscerate the requirements of the rule and result in the re-emergence of the same, serious problem that existed in the pre-1997 staffing arrangements – the concern that the recommendations that emerge from the staff have been slanted to reflect partisan considerations.

The current circumstances of the Standards Committee make it imperative that this issue be resolved promptly. The proper, longstanding practice of the Committee has been to assign two investigative attorneys to each formal investigation. Currently, however, there are no investigative attorneys on the Committee staff who are available for assignment: I understand that one investigative attorney departed last fall; another was dismissed unilaterally by the Chairman; and a third is temporarily replacing the unilaterally fired Chief Counsel-Staff Director and, under the bifurcation rules, cannot staff an investigative subcommittee. While new staff attorneys must be hired, that process cannot be commenced until there is agreement that the staff will continue to be, as required by the rules, a nonpartisan staff.

Repeal of the Republican Ethics Rules Changes Was Necessary and Proper.

Your April 27 letter is replete with benign characterizations of the ethics rules changes that were included in the Rules Package such as "minor but important changes," "common sense reforms," and "reasonable and rational." In fact, as was demonstrated in numerous analyses of those rules changes undertaken since January, at a minimum, they would have seriously undermined the ability of the Standards Committee to perform its key responsibility of investigating and adjudicating allegations of wrongdoing by Members and staff.

The Automatic Dismissal Provision. Your rules change permitted dismissal of a complaint solely because of the passage of time. Since1968, there had been only one way that a complaint could be dismissed, and that was by a majority vote of the Committee. This assured that the members of the Committee gave full and serious consideration to each complaint, including high-profile, controversial complaints with which some would rather not deal.

While praising the device of automatic dismissal as a means to preserve Members' "presumption of innocence," your letter also appears to assert that the rules changes did not in fact provide for automatic dismissal. Your letter asserts that if a complaint were placed on the Committee agenda, "the clock stops." In fact, the rules change contained no "Committee agenda" exception to automatic dismissal. Rather, that change provided that,

[I]f . . . the complaint is not disposed of within the applicable time periods under subparagraph (1) [45 days, or 90 days if approved by the Committee], and an investigative subcommittee has not been established, then such complaint shall be dismissed. (Paragraph (k)(2) of clause 3 of House Rule XI (emphasis added).)

“Right to Counsel.” In attempting to defend the so-called "right to counsel" rules change, your letter asserts that "[t]he right to counsel of one's own choosing is a fundamental right enjoyed by all Americans," and that "Members should be able to decide who represents them." In fact, what was at issue in this rules change was not a Member's decision on who would represent that Member, but whether it would be permissible for a Member under investigation to have his or her own attorney also represent witnesses who are called before the Committee in that case. Two separate investigative subcommittees of the Standards Committee - one chaired by Representative Rob Portman and the other by Representative Kenny Hulshof - stated explicitly in their reports that the multiple representation of parties by one attorney may impair the fact-finding process, and recommended the adoption of a rule or policy under which multiple representation could be barred.

“Due Process.” Regarding the so-called "due process" rules change, your letter asserts that, "It is a fundamental American value to be able to face your accusers and defend yourself," and that, "yet in H. Res. 131" - the resolution on the ethics rules changes that Ranking Minority Member Mollohan proposed and I co-sponsored - "you propose to repeal this right." You have been misinformed regarding H. Res. 131, because, in fact, under that resolution, all of those "rights" except one would have been continued. The one "right" that would have been eliminated under H. Res. 131 would have been the right of a Member to demand that the Committee conduct a trial on a matter immediately, before the Committee had conducted a formal investigation of that matter - that is, before a single subpoena had been issued, or a single deposition taken. That provision of your rules change was a recipe for a whitewash, and so under H. Res. 131, it would have been replaced with a right of the Member in question to demand instead that the Committee conduct a formal investigation of the particular matter.

* * *

If your ethics changes of earlier this year had included a provision repealing the requirement that the Committee have a nonpartisan staff, that provision would have been opposed at least as strenuously as all the others. In the same vein, a unilateral action by the Committee chairman that would be directly at odds with that requirement cannot be permitted to stand.

In your letter of April 27th, you committed to returning to the ethics rules under which the House operated in the 108th Congress. I trust that your commitment extends to this critical rule regarding the Committee staff, and that you will intercede accordingly with Chairman Hastings. The Committee must begin to perform its responsibilities as expeditiously as possible, and prompt recognition of his need to comply with that rule will enable it to do so.

I also trust that this letter helps to make clear the seriousness of the concerns raised by the ethics rules changes the majority attempted to effect, and the sincerity of the many Members who spoke out in opposition to them. There is only one fundamental purpose to all of the efforts that those Members and I have undertaken, and that is to re-establish and maintain an ethics process in the House of Representatives that provides for a thorough and fair investigation of credible allegations of wrongdoing, and the decisions of which are worthy of the respect and confidence of all Members and the American people.

Thank you for your attention to my concerns. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

/s/

NANCY PELOSI

“ Democrats are united in presenting a New Direction for America, one that will make our nation as strong as its people, one that brings opportunity, security, and prosperity to all Americans. ”

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi