Richardson case sent to ethics panel

I filed a complaint with the ethics commission outlining the news stories here locally and the fact that the foreclosure in Sacramento was only the tip of the iceburg. I never heard anything from it, but this may be an indication that they are taking the complaint seriously. Perhaps there was more than just my complaint, I can only hope that is the case. If you are interested in also complaining to the Office of Congressional Ethics HERE.

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Richardson case sent to ethics panel

Democratic Rep. Laura Richardson, embarrassed by a foreclosure dispute back home in California, may soon find herself the subject of a House ethics committee investigation.

Sources tell POLITICO that the Office of Congressional Ethics has referred Richardson’s case to the House ethics committee, which will be required to announce within days whether it’s going to pursue a full investigation.

Richardson’s case is one of three OCE referrals the committee will consider Thursday. The others — both previously reported — involve Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Sam Graves (R-Mo.).

Richardson’s case revolves around her home in Sacramento, which she lost to foreclosure and which then was sold to a third party and later regained by Richardson. Investigators for the OCE — an independent commission tasked with recommending cases to the ethics committee — looked into the foreclosure issue and whether neighbors who cleaned up Richardson’s blighted yard made an improper gift to the congresswoman by mowing the lawn and gardening.

The ethics office dismissed part of the case but forwarded parts of it to the committee, sources said.

Jeff Billington, Richardson’s spokesman, declined to comment on the case until the ethics committee decides whether to move ahead with an investigation.

The Richardson case comes amid tension between the OCE and the ethics committee on a variety of issues — including the date on which the committee must announce its disposition of the three OCE referrals. The OCE says time’s up Friday; the committee says it has until next Wednesday.

If the committee dismisses any of the complaints, it must then release the findings that were forwarded by OCE. The OCE’s transparency mandate has been clashing with the ethics committee’s traditional secrecy, with open-government advocates clamoring for more information and members of Congress trying to ensure that their reputations are not unfairly tarnished by the specter of ethics reviews that may turn up nothing.

Waters attracted OCE attention after media reports that she intervened with the Treasury Department last fall on behalf of a bank in which her husband had been on the board and owned stock. Waters is a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, serving as chairwoman of the Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee.

Graves, for his part, invited a business partner of his wife to testify before the Small Business Committee without disclosing his own financial ties to the witness. The congressman’s wife, Lesley Graves, and Brooks Hurst are both investors in an ethanol plant in Missouri.

The Graves case sparked a nasty public dispute between OCE and the ethics committee last month when the panel accused the OCE of withholding potential “exculpatory evidence” from Graves.

Former Reps. David Skaggs (D-Colo.) and Porter Goss (R-Fla.), who run the OCE, took issue with the charge and said that the six-member OCE board had found “substantial reason to believe that a substantive violation may have occurred.”