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Ethics Commission should reconsider ruling

Assume for a moment that you have a couple of thousand dollars to spend and you’d like to help your old friend, who is a public official running for re-election in West Virginia. You decide to print some fliers listing your buddy’s accomplishments, then allow him to distribute them. Three or four pictures of the candidate would be nice, you think.

Not so fast. That is not permitted, the West Virginia Ethics Commission has ruled.

Your reaction might well be, “Who are these people to tell me how I can spend my money?”

Earlier this year, the Legislature approved what has come to be known as “the trinkets law.” It was aimed at curbing misuse of the public’s money by local and state officials who, in years past, have spent substantial sums out of their government budgets for “educational material” ranging from direct-mail pieces to emery boards – all featuring the officials’ names and often, their pictures.

Refrigerator magnets, fans, pencils and pens, potholders, change holders, key chains, matchbooks, etc. can add up if purchased by the tens or hundreds of thousands. Documentary evidence indicates millions of dollars were misused by candidates in that way.

Cracking down on the practice is an excellent, long-overdue idea. The public’s money should be used for West Virginians’ good, not to help officials get re-elected.

And even if little or no public money is wasted, some other Ethics Commission rules aimed at curbing incumbents’ advantages seem reasonable. For example, officeholders are being told to limit the number of photographs of themselves featured on their official websites and banners they use at public functions.

But according to The Associated Press, the commission has taken matters another step. Even if an official’s educational material is printed with private funds, only one picture is allowed if the officeholder helps select the material and sends it out to the public. Commission members explained they did not want officials to be able to “thwart” the new law “by allowing or requesting third parties to finance the materials which are disseminated on their behalf.”

But the intent of the law, we presume most legislators would agree, was not to curb West Virginians’ rights under the First Amendment to spend their own money helping candidates. Federal courts have taken a dim view of such requirements at the national level.

Ethics commission members should reconsider their position, both to avoid trouble in court and to avoid telling Mountain State residents how we can and cannot spend our money.

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