Sunday, November 22, 2009
Editorial: Find the facts, lay them out
Hamilton's resignation should not be the end of lawmakers' quest to find what happened -- and what they might need to do.
From the RoundTable blog
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Newport News Republican Phil Hamilton resigned from the House of Delegates, apparently cutting short a state ethics investigation into his financial dealings as one of the legislature's senior budget negotiators.
The General Assembly needs -- and the public is due -- a full accounting.
Hamilton lost his bid for re-election this month after The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot revealed he had sought and secured a job at an Old Dominion University teaching center at the same time he was securing hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funding for it.
A federal grand jury investigation is under way. Hamilton's resignation likely has ended a House Ethics Advisory Panel's inquiry, though, because the state code specifies such panels have jurisdiction over General Assembly members. The law says nothing about former members.
Lawmakers should amend it to allow such panels to complete their work should the target of an investigation resign. An elected official should not be able to pull the plug simply by quitting, leaving peers and public alike in the dark about what occurred.
Knowing what happened matters to lawmakers -- or it should -- so they can know if any wrongdoing occurred and see if they need to tighten their rules or make other changes designed to prevent it from happening again.
A full accounting definitely matters to the public, which needs to see that elected officials do put the public interest above the private interests of the members of their little club.
Amending the code now, though, will get lawmakers no closer to a full report on possible illegalities in the Hamilton-ODU relationship. They need to find some route to determine all the facts behind events as they unrolled.
The university was a partner in what occurred. The legislature, or perhaps the governor, should look fully at its role and make the findings public.
Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine says he did not pursue an investigation during Hamilton's re-election campaign because it would have been seen as politically motivated. Indeed, Republican House Speaker Bill Howell has dismissed calls for any continued line of inquiry as partisan. Hamilton, he says, has suffered enough.
The issue is not Hamilton's suffering or his political party. It is the need to know if the General Assembly's ethics laws are doing their job, and if not, how to change them to serve the public.
