Campaign Legal Center Releases Report on Threats Facing Ethics Commissions in 2024
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.”