Open Government Office in ethics bill

The D.C. Council's Committee on Government Operations and the Environment Monday marked up and sent to the full Council a 109-page ethics bill including establishment of the Open Government Office as an independent sub-agency of the proposed three member Board of Ethics and Government Accountability. The bill will receive first reading today, and committee staff said the Council probably would schedule a special legislative session later in December to give a second reading and, if passed, to send the bill to the mayor by the end of the year.

Under the bill, the ethics board would appoint the Open Government Office director to a five-year term. Under the Open Meetings Amendment Act of 2010, passed a year ago, the appointment was to be made by the mayor with the advice and consent of the Council. But the mayor never made an appointment, even though the Open Meetings Act took effect in April and the Office is the only entity with authority to enforce the statute. Council Member Muriel Bowser, who introduced the Open Meetings Amendmend Act of 2010, proposed moving the Open Government Office to overcome the log jam.

The bill states that the Open Government Office is to be an independent entity with its powers defined in the Open Meetings Act. A previous draft of the ethics bill would have transferred the Office's powers to the ethics board. But those provisions were removed after the Coalition testified in a public roundtable that giving the board responsibility for enforcing the open meetings law was counterproductive and unnecessary.

The bill requires the ethics board to comply with the Open Meetings Act and to make public its investigations and hearings, a change from the previous version, which shrouded the board in secrecy. Other provisions require public officials and political campaigns to report their activities and finances to the Office of Campaign Finance, and those reports are to become public.