Yes, that’s a word. It’s also a good description of the state of our Attorney General.
Still a crook any way you look
Three decades following its inception, the [Texas Ethics C]ommission is toothless. Compliance of Texas’ ethics laws is largely voluntary. That’s because the agency relies on the Texas attorney general to enforce payment of fines for violations.
And under Ken Paxton, who himself owes $11,000 in ethics fines, that has rarely happened.
A review by The Texas Tribune found that the number of politicians, lobbyists and political action committees that owe fines for breaking state campaign finance laws has exploded in recent years.
The Texas Ethics Commission issues the penalties for violations of state campaign finance laws, most often when entities fail to file required reports detailing their fundraising, spending or personal financial holdings. Those penalties could also be for infractions like spending campaign dollars on improper expenditures, failing to register as a lobbyist or using government resources to campaign.
Fines are the primary enforcement mechanism to ensure political actors follow the law. But when the fines go unpaid, the responsibility for forcing delinquent individuals and groups to pay up falls on the attorney general’s office, which can take them to court.
Since Paxton took office in 2015, the ethics commission has referred 2,500 unpaid fines to the attorney general for enforcement, the Tribune found. During that time, Paxton’s office has filed just 175 enforcement lawsuits, or 7% of the cases referred to it. Most occurred early in his tenure. After filing none in 2020 and 2021, the attorney general’s office brought 18 cases in 2022, 25 last year and just one so far in the first six months of 2024.
As enforcement has lagged, the number of delinquent candidates and elected officials has soared. In 2019, 327 filers owed $1.3 million in fines. Through June, 750 filers owed $3.6 million.
That trend is alarming in a state with few regulations in its political system, said Anthony Gutierrez of open government advocacy group Common Cause.
“Candidates are supposed to be telling Texans who they’re taking money from, what they’re spending money on,” Gutierrez said. “If any of that information is not being disclosed, it’s a big deal. It could be being kept secret for a reason.”
[…]
The appetite for reform in the Texas Legislature is unknown. Reps. Reggie Smith, R-Sherman, and John Bucy, D-Austin, who are chair and vice chair of the House election committee, did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, chair of the Senate state affairs committee.
Gutierrez said allowing the ethics commission to file lawsuits on its own would be “a huge step,” towards restoring accountability to the state’s campaign finance system. Allowing the commission more independence, rather than having to rely on an elected attorney general, would help separate the body from political influence.
“It feels like any system where there’s a politician who’s subject to the laws and is also subject to enforcing the laws is just a flawed system,” Gutierrez said. “The ethics commission, as it exists today, just doesn’t have the powers it needs to enforce the laws on the books.”
See here for some background. One of the wildest things about this is that quite a few of the bigger violators are Democrats. You would think that would be catnip to a partisan like Paxton, but he just doesn’t care. I suppose he believes that he and his oligarch overlords are better off with no enforcement, even if it means some of his enemies get away with it as well.
It must be noted that as much fun as it is to take potshots at Paxton, this is another one of those situations where the voters have to want to do something about it. Republicans have no incentive to change anything, and Democrats have bigger issues they’d like to put before the voters. It’s also not like “clean government” campaigns are generally successful. I think it can be a catalyst when the winds are already in your favor – see, for example, the Democratic Congressional wave of 2006, which was primarily driven by Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the failed effort to privatize Social Security, but which got a boost from the multiple Republican scandals that were constantly in the news. I don’t think this message carries much weight on its own. And even if it did, as noted there are plenty of Dems with bad records on this front. Paxton deserves most of the blame for his failures of oversight, but the message is more complicated than that.