Here’s a little tidbit from an El Paso Times editorial:
At a City Council discussion Monday about ethics laws, it was revealed that the heart of the city’s ethics enforcement effort – the Ethics Review Committee – can’t function because council members haven’t filled vacancies.
Only three of nine seats on the commission are currently filled. That means the commission can’t even meet because such a meeting requires a quorum of five members.
. . .
But the council let this important commission slide into stasis. It hasn’t met since 2013.
Coincidentally, in 2013, the City was mired in a prolonged lawsuit fighting the release of former City Representatives’ private emails. The City never maintained that the emails should not be released, only that the City could not compel former City Representatives to release them.
The city’s English language daily has its own charitable take on the debacle.
This problem is not the result of any malicious attempt to neuter the Ethics Review Commission. Rather, it is a lack of focus on an important issue.
Right.
Oh, ethics? We must have misplaced them.