Ethics Investigators

WASHINGTON - Members of the House ethics committee who are on the investigative panel looking into the handling of complaints about former Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)’s conduct toward teenage House pages and Internet messages to former pages

Rep. Doc Hastings (news, bio, voting record), R-Wash., ethics committee chairman.

Quiet almost to the point of reclusive, Hastings in February 2005 agreed to replace Rep. Joel Hefley (news, bio, voting record), R-Calif., in one of the most thankless jobs in politics — ethics chairman. A former small-town paper supplier, Hastings blends into the scenery on Capitol Hill. He has never sought the microphone and media cameras in an institution where members hunger for them. As a lawmaker, his focus has been on constituent concerns: getting aid for Washington apple growers and federal cleanup money for the sprawling Hanford nuclear weapons reservation that once produced two-thirds of the nation’s plutonium.

Rep Howard Berman of California, senior Democrat on the ethics committee.

Berman is in his 12th term representing Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Calling it an “honor I could do without,” he reluctantly moved into the top Democratic spot on the ethics committee this past spring after Rep. Alan Mollohan (news, bio, voting record) of West Virginia left the panel amid controversy over his financial dealings. A fellow California, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, wanted Berman in the job because of his reputation as an intelligent and judicious negotiator.

Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (news, bio, voting record), D-Ohio.

A former judge and county prosecutor from Cleveland, Jones is only Ohio’s second black member of Congress in history. An outspoken partisan, she was among the few to vote against a House resolution in 2003 supporting U.S. troops because it linked the Sept. 11 attacks to the war in Iraq. She also led an unsuccessful challenge of the 2004 presidential election results in Ohio, where a narrow victory by President Bush over Democrat John Kerry returned Bush to the White House for a second term. But she declined to speak publicly about GOP Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record)’s agreement last month to plead guilty to corruption charges because of the ethics committee’s own investigation of Ney.

Rep. Judy Biggert (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill.

Elected to the House in 1998, Biggert has worked on several children’s issues. She has been part of the moderate GOP Tuesday Group but is conservative on many issues. She voted against creation of the Sept. 11 commission. Labor unions oppose her because of her efforts to change federal rules on workplace overtime. She helped craft the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which included her measure authorizing a nearly 100 percent increase in annual funding for homeless education programs.

// October 7th, 2006