Martin Austermuhle
Photo by @mjb.Ethics are good and all, but policing the unethical isn’t cheap.
D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi reported today that a proposed comprehensive ethics bill being considered by the D.C. Council would cost $2.9 million over four years, and admits that while the money can be found for 2012, legislators would have to dig to get the necessary resources for the 2013 to 2015 fiscal years.
The heart of the proposal presented by Councilmember Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) is the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, a new independent agency to police the District’s elected officials and employees. For 2012, the board’s three members and estimated eight employees (Bowser said it could grow to 12) would be paid for, but for every year after that it would cost taxpayers some $835,000 to keep the agency running.
Fortunately for Bowser, some of the money for the new board is already available. The Office of Open Government, which would be subsumed under the new board, has already been funded for the next four years, leaving Bowser and her colleagues to find only $1.5 million of the estimated $2.9 million.
That’s not much in the grand scheme of an operating budget that approaches $10 billion. But the District’s isn’t exactly flush with money, and the very years that the board will need money to operate are the years that Gandhi has said revenue projections are looking shaky.
