Photo by afagen.

Last week, Mayor Vince Gray told residents that they could apply to be on the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, the new three-person board charged with enforcing ethics rules across the District’s government. But a statutory deadline to actually nominate the three members passed yesterday, reports the Examiner, with no nominations made by Gray.

After the city’s new ethics law went into effect, Gray was given 45 days to nominate the three members of the board that will actually enforce the law’s provisions. As of yesterday’s deadline, though, no nominations had been made. According to the Gray administration, the timeframe was too short and they’re moving along with choosing the three members:

“We [are] continuing to vet and review candidates and expect to release our nominations shortly,” Gray spokesman Pedro Ribeiro told The Washington Examiner in an email Wednesday.

…

In an interview Wednesday, Ribeiro said the public announcement was “supplemental and complementary” to prior internal deliberations.

He also said the 45-day period the law granted was too short of a time frame for Gray to select qualified nominees.

“Forty-five days is a very short window to find people who are experts in those particular fields,” Ribeiro said.

Maybe taking a little more time is all for the best. The last time nominations for important posts were rushed, after all, it quickly became clear that one person had voted in the District while living in Maryland and the other hadn’t even lived here long enough to take the position.