The Virginian-Pilot has been all over the latest information on the Phil Hamilton situation. In an article on the front page of Tuesday’s paper (strangely buried on the website here), the cancellation of the ethics probe is causing concern.
Frustrated by the halt to the inquiry, House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong, D-Henry County, said Tuesday that his caucus plans to push a package of ethics reform bills during the upcoming legislative session.
While some of the specific ideas are still being discussed, Armstrong said, one proposal will call for meetings of the ethics panel that are now held in private to be made public
Um, yeah. That would make sense. Or at the least this:
A report of the panel’s work is provided to the person who requested the investigation – in this case, [Speaker of the House Bill] Howell. He said he doesn’t plan to make it public.
We should keep the pressure on Mr. Howell. The report should be public.
Of course, I happen to agree with the editorial board: the probe should continue. Even The Daily Press, who endorsed Hamilton for re-election, finds the cessation of the ethics investigation “regrettable.”
A single line in the Pilot article mentioned something intriguing:
Last month, the clerk for the House of Delegates turned over documents related to Hamilton in response to a federal subpoena.
The details of this are in this Washington Post blog post:
House Clerk Bruce Jamerson said today that he received a subpoena for Hamilton’s economic interest forms, travel vouchers and documents relating to the Old Dominion University teaching center where Hamilton secured a job.
The subpoena was hand-delivered Sept. 22. Documents were to be made available by Oct. 21 — the next meeting date of the federal grand jury, according to Jamerson.
How come this didn’t come out during the election? It certainly would have been useful to know, even if it wouldn’t have changed the election results. I doubt if the reporters covering the General Assembly would have kept this information quiet so someone – and I’m not pointing a finger at Jamerson here – made the decision to do so. That they would go to those lengths to keep this under wraps until now should scare all of us: what else are they, our elected representatives, keeping from us?
“Sunshine is the best disinfectant,” according to Justice Lewis Brandeis. Let the sun shine in on the Hamilton investigation.
UPDATE: Gov. Kaine says the investigation should continue. Funny – he used the same Brandeis quote as I did.
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