Ethics Committee

The General Assembly's joint ethics committee has recommended unanimously that the Senate censure Sen. Ulysses Currie, once a powerful committee chairman, for failing to disclose that he was being paid to represent a grocery chain before state agencies. In what would be the harshest action taken against a legislator since 1998, the ethics panel also urged senators to strip Currie "immediately and permanently" of all but one committee assignment and to bar him from any role in House-Senate negotiations to resolve differences over bills.

The General Assembly's joint ethics committee has recommended unanimously that the Senate censure Sen. Ulysses Currie, once a powerful committee chairman, for failing to disclose that he was being paid to represent a grocery chain before state agencies. In what would be the harshest action taken against a legislator since 1998, the ethics panel also urged senators to strip Currie "immediately and permanently" of all but one committee assignment and to bar him from any role in House-Senate negotiations to resolve differences over bills.

A General Assembly committee charged with reviewing the behavior of state Sen. Ulysses Currie met briefly Thursday behind closed doors in what was described as an organizational session. Currie, a Prince George's County Democrat recently acquitted of federal bribery charges, did not appear. Del. Brian McHale, co-chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on Ethics, would not comment except to say the panel's initial meeting focused on organization and procedure. "I'm not going to run the risk of violating what I'm required to protect," said McHale, a Baltimore city Democrat.

A General Assembly committee charged with reviewing the behavior of state Sen. Ulysses Currie met briefly Thursday behind closed doors in what was described as an organizational session. Currie, a Prince George's County Democrat recently acquitted of federal bribery charges, did not appear. Del. Brian McHale, co-chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on Ethics, would not comment except to say the panel's initial meeting focused on organization and procedure. "I'm not going to run the risk of violating what I'm required to protect," said McHale, a Baltimore city Democrat.

Mount Airy Mayor Gerald R. Johnson has reappointed South Main Street resident Richard J. Swanson to the town's ethics committee.The committee meets only when an ethics issue arises concerning a town employee or official. It has four members, all serving four-year terms.FireMount Airy: Firefighters responded at 3 p.m. Thursday to an auto fire on westbound Interstate 70 near Route 75. Units were out seven minutes.Mount Airy: Firefighters responded at 3: 38 p.m. Thursday to an auto fire in the 1000 block of Twin Arch Road.

THE CHARADE transpiring in the Maryland State House this holiday season could well be called, "Toothless in Annapolis." A joint ethics committee has been ordered to conduct a hurry-up examination of the business dealings of Sen. Larry Young of West Baltimore. But the panel lacks all the essential tools and powers needed to do the job correctly.It also lacks enforcement powers. Even if panel members concluded that Senator Young had used his public office to further his private business activities, the group cannot take action against him. All it can do is recommend.

WASHINGTON - The top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Ethics Committee has requested a formal review of lobbying practices in the chamber to determine whether tighter restrictions are needed. "I believe a Senate-wide review of policies that relate to all current lobbying practices is in order and have conveyed that to the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee," Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement yesterday. Reid has repeatedly sponsored legislation and taken other action to help real estate developers, mining companies and other large economic interests in Nevada.

NEWT GINGRICH is about to become the only speaker of the House ever to be formally reprimanded by his colleagues. This is something his fellow Republicans either have to live with or conclude that having a discredited speaker in the chair is an unacceptable impediment to the GOP agenda. They will get no help from Democrats who believe Mr. Gingrich's retention in office is their best defense against assaults on President Clinton, who begins his second term today.Mr. Gingrich's conduct in defending himself on charges of using tax-exempt money to finance his political activities has been assailed by the House ethics committee as an "intentional . . . or reckless" affront to House rules.

The legislature's ethics committee met for an hour and half yesterday to discuss Del. Gerald J. Curran's business dealings, but cut short the session because of other committee scheduling conflicts.Members of the panel emerged from the closed meeting to say they would meet again today to decide whether to proceed with a full investigation into possible ethics violations by the Northeast Baltimore Democrat.If the committee does move ahead, it must decide whether to hire an independent counsel to guide the inquiry, as it it did in the recently concluded investigation of former Sen. Larry Young.

As the General Assembly prepared to return to Annapolis, staffers for its ethics committee worked through the weekend preparing a draft report on an investigation into the business dealings of Sen. Larry Young.The 12-member Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics is likely to reach a decision tomorrow about whether the West Baltimore Democrat violated state ethics laws and, if so, what to recommend as punishment.On Friday, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller hastily scheduled a meeting of Senate leaders for 4 p.m. tomorrow to discuss the matter.

An ethics investigation of state Sen. Ulysses S. Currie got off the ground today in Annapolis as the Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics  held its first meeting of the 2012 legislative session. The committee met briefly in public before closing the meeting to deal with the Currie case and perhaps other complaints covered under confidentiality provision in state law. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had said Wednesday that the committee would take up the Currie case, which flows out of a federal bribery and extortion trial that led to the Prince George's County Democrat's acquittal last November.

The General Assembly's ethics adviser has counseled state lawmakers that they should disclose when they or an immediate family member serve on the boards of organizations seeking bond funding through legislation. In a memo written late Monday in response to an article in The Baltimore Sun, William G. Somerville told lawmakers they should file a form that discloses the unpaid positions and asserts their ability to "act fairly, objectively and in the public interest" with regard to the bills.

DENVER - The president of the Maryland Senate said yesterday that Sen. Ulysses Currie's work for a regional grocery chain should be investigated by the General Assembly, but Sen. Thomas V. Mike Miller dismissed speculation that he would ask the Prince George's County Democrat to step down from his leadership post. "Senator Currie, in my opinion, is guilty of making a terrible mistake," said Miller, who is attending the Democratic National Convention here. "Knowing him, I believe it was absent-mindedness.

WASHINGTON -- Arriving as president of the World Bank in the summer of 2005, Paul D. Wolfowitz told colleagues that he was eager to tackle poverty in Africa and corruption in aid. But almost immediately he became consumed by frustrating negotiations with bank officials over the status of his companion, an employee at the bank, documents released this month show. Now these documents are at the center of the World Bank's inquiry into his conduct and Wolfowitz's defense, both of which will be presented at the World Bank's board of directors tomorrow.

WASHINGTON -- In a coda to a year of political disasters for Republicans, the House ethics committee declared yesterday that GOP lawmakers and staff members for years remained "willfully ignorant" that former Rep. Mark Foley was making sexual advances toward male congressional pages. Instead, driven by political considerations and fear of exposing Foley's homosexuality, they failed in their duty to protect the teenagers, the committee concluded. And, the panel said, congressional officials ignored evidence of predatory behavior by the Florida Republican that began emerging more than 10 years ago. Despite these criticisms, the bipartisan ethics panel found that no House rules were broken in the handling of the Foley case.

WASHINGTON -- Speaker Dennis Hastert yesterday became the first leader of the House of Representatives in a decade to testify before its ethics committee, fielding hours of questions about what he knew about former Rep. Mark Foley's inappropriate approaches to teenage pages and when he knew it. As public dismay over Republican leadership of Congress has risen, Hastert has faced increasing questions about whether he and other party leaders ignored or...

The legislature's ethics committee will begin investigating the business affairs of Sen. Larry Young today, with the veteran lawmaker's reputation and potentially his State House power on the line.The 12-member panel is expected to outline the areas it wants to investigate, drawing from an article last week in The Sun that reported possible ethical violations by Young.The committee inquiry could clear Young of violating state ethics laws or, if it finds improprieties, lead to disciplinary action by the 47-member Senate, including expulsion.

The Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics has decided not to investigate allegations that Sen. Richard F. Colburn required a former aide to write college term papers for him, the senator's lawyer said yesterday. The former aide, Gregory Dukes, requested that the committee investigate his allegations, but Colburn attorney Timothy Maloney said the committee wrote to the Eastern Shore Republican to say it was dismissing the complaint. "He got a letter saying they were not investigating," Maloney said.

WASHINGTON -- The House Ethics Committee is ramping up its investigation into a sex scandal that has roiled the Republican-controlled Congress, with the first witnesses coming to an otherwise quiet Capitol to testify this week behind closed doors on what they knew, and when, about ex-Rep. Mark Foley's contacts with male pages. In what is shaping up as a classic "he said/he said," Kirk Fordham, a former Foley aide, is expected to testify that he warned House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office in 2003 or earlier about the former Florida Republican's inappropriate interest in teenage pages.

Maybe only a sex scandal can wake up a somnolent Congress and so outrage the American public that this sordid event becomes the catalyst for real change. This is a story of two kinds of addictions: Rep. Mark Foley's alleged addiction to alcohol and presumed addiction to House pages, and the addiction of House leaders to winning elections at all cost. You can go into rehab for alcohol and sex addictions. Unfortunately, there are no such facilities for those addicted to power. But that addiction really is what prevented House leaders from taking all the precautions they should have when they learned about the "overly friendly" e-mails that Mr. Foley, a Florida Republican, was exchanging with a Louisiana page.