The trouble with accountability in public life is the unwillingness of those held to account to acknowledge the sin.
On Friday, Democratic Lt. Gov. Brad Owen was fined $15,000 by the state’s Executive Ethics Board for violating the Ethics in Public Service Act. ($5,000 was waived if he keeps his nose clean in the next two years.) Owen used public resources to support Strategies for Youth, the non profit he established in 1989 to discourage young people from using drugs. He also hired one its employees to work in his office.
Reading the board’s “stipulated facts, conclusions and order,” is to experience a legal minuet. “Brad Owen recognizes that the evidence available to the board staff is such that the board may conclude he violated the Ethics in Public Service Act.” Owen recognized the evidence available, read the law, determined that the board would find he violated the act, and then washed his hands of it, sans apology.
“This settlement is agreed to merely to put an end to a frustrating process that does not allow me or any elected official the right to be heard by a jury of our peers as is guaranteed any other citizen,” Owen said. “Therefore, any further effort would just take away from the important work of my office. It is imperative that we just move on. This settlement in no way diminishes my commitment or that of my office to the children of Washington state. That important work will continue with vigor.”
The office-use pattern was set more than a decade ago. Owen ponied up $7,000 in 1998 to underwrite an Executive Ethics Board’s investigation of his office’s role opposing a state initiative.
As KPLU’s Austin Jenkins reported earlier this year, Owen had expressed disappointment over state Senate heel-dragging on a bill to assist elected officials who incur legal costs from ethics investigations. People such as, say, Brad Owen. He wanted to raise the limit for public contributions to a defense fund from $50 to $500. As the presiding poobah over the Senate, Owen has lots of lobbyist friends he could hit up for a half-grand each.
In 2012, Owen, who has served in elected office for four decades, told the Herald Editorial Board that he had done more for the office of lieutenant governor than any of his predecessors (the office was established in 1889.) What about the legendary Joel Pritchard, emblematic of the vital center and get-things-done bipartisanship? “A nice guy,” Owen said. “But he did nothing.”
Sigh. Pritchard was as humble and accomplished as Owen is not. If Owen simply had acknowledged his mistake, it would have gone a long way to repair a diminished legacy.
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