D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has not picked his nominees for the District’s new Board of Ethics and Government Accountability more than a month after a legal deadline passed for him to do so.
Under the law establishing the board, which will probe allegations of unethical conduct in District government and craft ethics guidelines for city employees, Gray was to select the panel’s inaugural three members by March 14, 45 days after the law took effect. But that date came and went without nominees, all of whom the D.C. Council will have to approve.
Pedro Ribeiro, a spokesman for Gray, said Friday that the mayor plans to announce his nominees in “mid-April.”
“I’m confident we can meet that time frame,” Ribeiro said.
Earlier this month, Ward 4 Councilwoman Muriel Bowser, who wrote the law creating the panel and chairs the committee that will oversee it, said she was frustrated by the slow pace of the nominations process.
“We’re already beyond the time frame we thought was reasonable,” Bowser said. “If the mid-April date is missed, it makes it really difficult to move forward.”
But Ribeiro said Gray’s aides have been working quickly to identify appropriate nominees to fill the seats.
One official close to the selection process acknowledged, though, that few District residents have been willing to serve on the high-profile panel at a time when federal authorities are conducting at least two probes into possible corruption in city government.SClB”Everybody turns us down,” the official said. “No one wants to serve.”
The aide blamed “the poisoned environment” and intense public scrutiny for the lack of willingness.
“It really turns people off toward serving in government,” the staff member said.
The minimum qualifications for board service are thin: Prospective members must be registered voters who have lived in the District for at least a year. They also cannot be lobbyists, convicted felons or officeholders in city government or District political organizations.
The role of filling hundreds of seats on the District’s boards and commissions has bedeviled Gray throughout his 14-month tenure in the city’s top job.
An Examiner analysis in March showed 27 city boards had no members at all or were made up entirely of people whose terms had expired. At the time, more than 700 board seats were vacant.
