Tag Archives: Senate Ethics Panel

We’re About to Find Out, Yet Again, How Terrible the Legislature’s Ethics Regime Truly Is

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Hey, look: Somebody filed an ethics complaint against two state senators!

We wouldn’t know this, of course, except that the complainant announced the action in a press release. You’d never hear anything about it from official sources, because the Senate’s ethics process is a black hole from which no light can ever escape. Likewise the House’s process, but that’s another story.

The complaint was filed by Geo Honigford of Friends of Vermont Public Education. The targets, familiar to devotees of this here blog, are Sens. Seth Bongartz and Scott Beck. Honigford points out that both men have strong affiliations with private schools receiving public tuition dollars, and both lobbied aggressively for the interests of those schools in recent negotiations over public education reform.

I suppose you could think of Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth as an unnamed co-conspirator, since it was Senate leadership that chose to install Bongartz and Beck on the House-Senate conference committee on education reform. Or maybe his right hand, Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale, could be included as well. She must have had a role in choosing two pro-private school senators to the committee.

Oh wait, Ram Hinsdale is chair of the Senate Ethics Panel, which will consider Honigford’s complaint. Right, right, probably best to leave her name out of it.

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The Legislature’s Ethics Regimen Continues To Be a Sick Joke

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Last week, the House Ethics Panel issued its annual report — and provided its annual reminder that the Legislature’s ethics process is meant to serve its members, not the public interest.

The entire report occupies less than half a page of copy. Three paragraphs, 11 lines, 123 words. Took me a brisk 43 seconds to read it from start to finish. (At least the House panel actually filed a report. There’s no sign of a corresponding document from the Senate Ethics Panel.)

The report complies with the law, which means there are no details whatsoever. Everything is concealed from public view except the scantiest outline of the Panel’s minimal activity for the year 2024. The report can be downloaded from the General Assembly’s list of Legislative Reports, for all the good it’ll do ya.

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