Photo by Kevin H.

During the campaign for the At-Large Special Election in April, then-candidate Bryan Weaver often spoke of the need for significant ethics and campaign reform in the District. Far-reaching changes were so important, Weaver noted at one candidate forum, that city officials should just consider blowing up the existing system and start over.

Maybe things won’t be that dramatic, but a raft of proposals and ideas that have emerged in recent months point to a potential overhaul of the District’s laws governing everything from campaign finance to how elections are run and who investigates ethical transgressions.

Last Friday, a local D.C. fundraiser, Bernard Demczuk, wrote an op-ed in the Post in which he pledged to stop raising money for local candidates unless campaign and elections rules were tightened up to avoid some of the scandals we’re seeing today. Demczuk proposed making it harder for candidates to jump into local races by increasing the number of signatures they’d have to collect (citywide candidates would have to gather 6,000 instead of the current 2,000, while ward-based candidates would need 2,000 instead of the current 500). He also suggested that every candidate that gets on the ballot receive $25,000 in public funds for their campaign, that all private contributions be limited to $25 (currently contribution limits stand at $1,000) and that terms be extended from four to five years to allow elected officials to settle in and learn how to govern.

Earlier in July, political consultant Tom Lindenfeld similarly published an op-ed outlining 10 changes he believed would help clean up D.C. politics. Amongst his ideas, Lindenfeld, who worked with Mayor Adrian Fenty and At-Large candidate Sekou Biddle, wants to see bans on contributions from lobbyists, political action committees and entities seeking government contracts; an end to constituent service funds; a prohibition on elected leaders from receiving free legal advice; and stronger city contracting and open government rules. (The Post’s editorial page endorsed most of Lindenfeld’s ideas in its own editorial on D.C. government ethics.)

Others have proposed banning second jobs for sitting councilmembers and forcing elected officials to make their annual tax returns public.

Even elected officials have jumped in to propose stronger ethics laws, to mixed reviews. Legislation proposed by embattled D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown and Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) received lukewarm support from D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan during a hearing in June, provoking a competing proposal from Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At-Large) to create an “ethics and accountability committee” to police legislators. While neither of the proposals dealt with elections, Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) floated his own legislative fixes, including banning the bundling of campaign contributions and creating reporting requirements for transition and inaugural committees.

As you can see, there are plenty of ideas out there. But as Weaver himself noted in a post on Greater Greater Washington, any piecemeal approach to ethics and election reform could well be seen as simply “rearranging the deck chairs.” (I also pointed out that when the council moved to regulate exploratory committees in 2005, candidates and fundraisers simply found new ways to do the same things.)

Additionally, with many councilmembers themselves facing questions about their ethics and integrity, who might take the first crack at a substantial overhaul of the District’s ethics, elections and campaign finance rules? It won’t likely be Cheh, who lost her perch stop the Committee on Government Operations in the recent council reshuffling. Her replacement, Councilmember Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), is credited with authoring the District’s new Open Meetings Law, and will now have the opportunity to move ethics reform forward.

Even if Bowser does push an overhaul, there will likely have to be an increase in the capacity to monitor and enforce any new rules, regulations and restrictions. After a recent hearing at the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics looking into Brown’s scandalous 2008 campaign spending, Chairman Togo West bluntly opined that it wasn’t the lack of rules holding him back, but rather the limited personnel he has to enforce them.

“I say, get me some more auditors so that I can flood the place with auditors the way the FBI does. You want to improve ethics policing in the District of Columbia, get me some more auditors,” West said.