scales of justice 2Woe to anyone who complains about ethical lapses of a public official and then goes public under a proposal passed by the House early Thursday morning. The bill now goes to the Senate.

The person complaining would face much harsher penalties than the public official. Under the proposal creating a State Ethics Commission a person filing a complaint and then going public could face a $26,000 fine and a year in jail. A public official, on the other hand, found to have violated the public trust would face a censure or public reprimand.

The House voted 49 to 15 to pass the bill after a relatively short debate in which Democrats swatted away several amendments from Republicans to strengthen the bill.

“We need to have a true ethics commission, not ethics reform with a wink and a nod,” House Minority Whip Keith Gardner, R-Roswell, said during the debate.

The disproportionate harshness visited on a person leaking a complaint compared to a public official violating the public trust has caused long-time supporters to oppose this year’s State Ethics Commission proposal. They say the confidentiality provisions and harsh penalties once a complainant breaks his or her silence would discourage people from reporting possible wrongdoing.

“It’s a shame because the concept is important for our state,” Steven Robert Allen, executive director of  Common Cause of New Mexico, told The Independent. “Unfortunately they didn’t get some of the details right.”

The ethics commission envisioned in the proposal could ask a district court to issue subpoenas during an investigation. It also could forward findings of possible criminal wrongdoing to a district attorney or the New Mexico Attorney General.

The bill sets aside $200,000 to pay for the first year of the new state ethics commission.

The Legislature has kept an independent State Ethics Commission at arms-length over the past five years even as the public scandals have mounted around New Mexico. Two former state treasurers, a former Senate majority leader and a deputy insurance superintendent have either pleaded guilty or been convicted of public corruption by federal authorities.

Meanwhile, New Mexico Attorney General Gary King indicted a former housing authority director and former secretary of state last year on charges of corruption.

More than 40 states have some kind of state ethics commission.

Last year the New Mexico House of Representatives passed a bill that treated executive and legislative branch officials differently when found guilty of ethics violations.

In the case of the executive branch, which includes the governor, lieutenant governor, appointed officials and state workers, the commission under that proposal was required to issue a public report. That report could include “public reprimands or censures or recommend disciplinary actions” if the commission were to find “clear and convincing evidence” that the official’s behavior constitutes an ethics violation.

The commission process treated legislators a little differently. In the case of a legislator for whom the commission finds clear and convincing evidence of an ethics violation, the commission would issue a “confidential report to the appropriate legislative ethics committee.”