Too little, too late.
As a vote on his fate draws near, state Ethics Administrator Brian Bell is ripping the former state ethics agency, the Government Accountability Board, saying he left it in 2015 because it enforced the law unevenly and one of its top attorneys, Democrat Shane Falk, “displayed open partisanship.”
[…]
Bell, in a memo to lawmakers Wednesday, singled out Falk — the accountability board’s former staff counsel — saying he “displayed open partisanship,” defied his supervisors and “enabled a climate at the GAB that made it acceptable to make offensive or disparaging remarks about political parties, candidates and elected officials.”
“Other staff, including some in management, furthered and tolerated such a climate,” Bell wrote.
Here’s the thing… Bell may very well be on the up and up. But even as he himself admits, the GAB was so rabidly unethical and partisan that anyone associated with it can’t wash off the stench. And the fact that Bell is only making these statements three years after the fact and when his job is threatened makes his denunciations ring a bit hollow.
Frankly, I’m less concerned with Bell right now than his bosses who have reflexively decided to die on this hill instead of working to ensure that the Ethics Commission’s reputation for integrity is above reproach.
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