El Paso’s Ethics Commission Gets More Power

Since the public corruption investigation started a few years ago, newly elected county officials have been working towards increasing faith in county politics.

One way they planned on doing that was forming a county ethics commission. It was formed after the F-B-I raided the county courthouse in May 2007.

With a public corruption cloud looming over county government a more powerful ethics commission has been formed and will soon be ready to take action.

“Folks are hyper vigilant and I think that’s where this commission plays a role,” said County Ethics Commission Chairperson, David Nemir.

Now, after guilty verdicts for Gilbert Sanchez and Luther Jones, the commission met to review the final draft of a new ethics code.

“We’ve heard from members of the public, judges, elected officials, county employees and vendors,” said Nemir.

It also had to be revised to catch up with legislation passed last year.

“The ethics commission will have the ability to levy civil penalties,” said Nemir.

And now it has more explicit guidelines for employees, elected officials, vendors and lobbyists.

“They have to report contributions, they have to report their visits to and from, all of that is logged and documented,” said County Commissioner Veronica Escobar.

Jones and Sanchez face up to 20 years in prison on each of two counts.

“It affirms that there was a lot of pay to play going on,” said Escobar.

The focus now, Escobar said is to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again.

“The government’s case sent a clear message, that if you engage in things like this, then there are consequences,” Escobar said.

Nemir said the new ethics code should be approved by the end of May.

In the meantime, there will be a mock trial period to make sure complaints are being handled properly.