WASHINGTON, D.C. — Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has released a new report, “Threat Assessment 2024: Risks and Challenges Facing Ethics Commissions,” which highlights the legal and legislative attempts to weaken state ethics commissions over the past year. This report aims to provide state ethics commissions with the information they need to stay informed about these threats, and insights to help advance their missions and protect their role in our democracy. 

For over 50 years, ethics commissions operating at the state and local levels served as watchdogs to ensure government officials prioritized public service, which is essential for maintaining public trust in government. But in 2024, CLC found that state ethics commissions across the country have faced three major types of threats:

• Enforcement power threats: attempts to limit the ability of ethics commissions to investigation or penalize violations of law; 
• Subject matter jurisdiction threats: attempts to limit the kinds of laws ethics commissions can administer and enforce; and 
• Existential threats: attempts to strip ethics commissions of their power altogether.

Ethics commissions in eleven states were most seriously impacted by legislative and legal threats to their powers: Maine; New York; Georgia; Alabama; Missouri; Texas; Minnesota; Louisiana; Nevada; Florida and Hawaii. 

Oregon, Florida and Vermont expanded the powers of their respective commissions to hold government officials to high ethical standards this year. 

“State ethics commissions play a critical role in securing the public’s trust in ethical government, as evidenced by state and local governments having higher rates of public trust than the federal government,” said Delaney Marsco, CLC’s director of ethics. “While these watchdogs may face administrative and logistical challenges common among government agencies, ethics commissions continue to face novel legal and legislative threats that imperil their missions. Empowering state ethics commissions with information about these threats and tactics to combat them is essential because voters have a right to know that state and local officials prioritize serving the public interest.” 

This report is the fourth in CLC’s annual report series designed to promote the successes of state and local government ethics offices, following 2021’s “Top Ten Transparency Upgrades for Ethics Commissions,” 2022’s “Top Ten Enforcement Upgrades for Ethics Commissions,” and 2023’s “Top Ten Training Upgrades for Ethics Commissions.” 

Read CLC’s 2024 Ethics Commission Report

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against “Save Our Home Planet Action, Inc.” (“SOHPA”) and anyone who provided it with funds to make over $1.4 million in political contributions in “SOHPA”’s name, a blatant violation of federal campaign finance laws. 

The complaint alleges that SOHPA, established on August 6, 2024, was not the true source of contributions made to five different super and hybrid PACs. By using SOHPA as a shell company in their “straw donor” scheme, the individuals behind these contributions violated laws intended to promote transparency, depriving voters of essential information. 

“Voters have a right to know who is spending money to influence their votes, elect their preferred candidates, and sway public policy,” says Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at CLC. “This is just the latest example of how wealthy corporate special interests are using straw donor schemes to secretly spend enormous amounts of money on our elections. The FEC must investigate who really contributed over $1.4 million through this scheme, and hold any violators accountable for depriving the public of this vital information.” 

SOHPA has no online footprint or record of other activities that could explain how it was able to make millions in political contributions, beginning just 10 days after being formed, absent an infusion of funds provided for that purpose. Notably, SOHPA appears to share an address with the corporate headquarters of Patagonia, Inc., according to the financial disclosures of the political committees it contributed to. Even the name of the purported donor entity, “Save Our Home Planet Action,” quotes verbatim Patagonia’s corporate motto “to save our home planet,” a phrase that the company also uses on its merchandise. These connections, CLC alleges, strongly suggest that Patagonia or its executives may be the true source of the contributions made in SOHPA’s name. 

The FEC has previously issued civil fines over straw donor schemes. To protect voters’ rights, CLC has asked it to investigate who is really behind the over $1.4 million in contributions by SOHPA to political action committees.

Washington, D.C. — In response to the apparent lack of ethics reviews of Cabinet nominees, Kedric Payne, Vice President, General Counsel and Senior Director for Ethics at Campaign Legal Center and former Deputy Chief Counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics, issued the following statement: 

“Those nominated by the president-elect to help lead this next administration will hold immensely privileged positions of power if confirmed. That is why the Office of Government Ethics is tasked with meticulously reviewing the nominee’s financial holdings and any potential conflicts of interest they pose before they can be considered for Senate confirmation. 

"Without this crucial review — which is mandated by law — nominees may enter office with conflicts of interest (obvious or hidden) that they are not ordered to remedy. If this occurs, not only are Americans deprived of critical information about those poised to hold immense power, but those powerholders could manipulate the government for their own personal benefit while facing little to no consequence. 

"We are less than six weeks away from Inauguration Day, and it is incredibly alarming that the incoming administration has not begun what is typically a month's long transition process. Trump may be attempting to have confirmation hearings happen before ethics investigations are completed. 

"When Trump’s first term nominations approached confirmation hearings without a completed ethics investigation, we relied on Senators pushing back and postponing confirmation until the rule of law was followed. But we do not seem to have the same resistance to his power this time around — Trump may very well try to usher his appointments through without any sort of ethics review process at all.

"This is not just a break from precedent — Trump is breaking the law and setting a dangerous tone for the role that accountability and ethics will play in this next administration if the nominees are not reviewed for conflicts of interest. If we do not bother to hold some of the most politically powerful members of our government to ethical guidelines before they even enter office, there is little hope that these leaders will bother with ethics guidelines throughout their public service.”