The chairman of the state’s ethics board violated ethics statutes by making $250 worth of campaign contributions to Gov. M. Jodi Rell and two Republican state legislative candidates in 2008 — and on Friday he said he expects to be fined by his own agency.
G. Kenneth Bernhard, a former Republican state representative from Westport who now is chairman of the Citizen’s Ethics Advisory Board, made that statement a day after a Courant reporter called him Thursday night to ask about the contributions shown in campaign financing records.
He said he has no plans to resign.
Records show that Bernhard, who has been on the ethics board since January 2008 and became chairman last fall, made a $100 contribution on Oct. 20, 2008, to Rell — who then had an exploratory campaign committee for a re-election candidacy that she now has dropped. He made an earlier $100 donation that year to a Republican state Senate candidate, Vincent Marino of Orange, who lost that year’s election. He also contributed $50 to Nitzy Cohen, a Republican state House candidate in his hometown district.
State laws say that members of the ethics board, and employees of the Office of State Ethics that it oversees, are banned from making campaign contributions to state officials who fall under state ethics laws — as the governor does and state legislators do, as well as virtually all other state officials and state employees.
Bernhardt Friday acknowledged the contributions but said he didn’t know at the time that he shouldn’t make them. He said he expects that the ethics board will appoint a three-member subcommittee next week to investigate his conduct, and that he will be fined. The law establishes a maximum fine of $10,000 per violation.
Late Friday afternoon, Bernhard issued this statement: “It was brought to my attention yesterday that because I made small contributions to three political campaigns I may have violated the state code of ethics that prohibits someone in my position from making any political contributions in state races.’
“The contributions were done openly with full disclosure,” he said. “When I made these contributions as a gesture of support for the political process, I was unaware of the prohibition. As a member of the Citizen’s Ethics Advisory Board, I have been entrusted with great responsibility and I am very distressed at having technically violated the coede, even as everything was in public view and inadvertent. I expect that my conduct will be evaluated and handled in the same fashion as everyone else who is subject to the code.”
The director of the Office of State Ethics, Carol Carson, said Friday afternoon that she had discussions with Bernhard since The Courant called him Thursday night, and they both declined comment on how it would be handled until the end of the workday Friday — when she issued a press release that included his statement.
When Bernhard was reached by The Courant Thursday night about the donations, he at first expressed uncertainty about whether and when he made them. He then said that Marino is his law partner, and Rell is “a friend,” and he probably hadn’t given as much thought to the donations as he should have.
The issue of political activities by members of the board and the ethics office arose in December. That was when the board, in a 6-2 vote, approved a legal opinion saying that the ethics watchdogs are permitted by law them to perform volunteer campaign work — even for candidates covered by state ethics statutes.
Such candidates would be subject to regulation, and possible investigation over ethics complaints, by the very ethics watchdogs who helped their campaigns. The issue in the legal opinion involved volunteering in campaigns, not donating to them. The ban on financial contributions was never in question, and the issue was whether that long-recognized prohibition also should extend to volunteer campaign work.
The Courant published a Government Watch column about the issue last Sunday, and it immediately became controversial. Key legislators said such political activities by any of the nine ethics board members, or by any of the 18 ethics office employees, could create an appearance of bias by watchdogs who are supposed to be impartial — and could diminish public confidence in decisions by the board and agency.
The legislators vowed to introduce a bill during the current legislative session to close what they called a loophole in the law by explicitly banning such volunteer political activities by the ethics watchdogs. They said that when legislators created the new ethics board and agency in 2005, they intended to ban political activities as well as contributions by the ethics watchdogs.
When Bernhard first answered the phone Thursday night to talk to The Courant, he said the recent, controversial legal opinion was based strictly on the wording of the law, adding that he agreed completely with the proposal to close the loophole and ban volunteer work as well as contributions. That was before he was asked about the contributions in state records, which The Courant encountered when reviewing state reports in following up on last week’s column.
Asked what he planned to do concerning the donations, he said he might talk with Carson, and mentioned the possibility of some suitable “mea culpa.” A day later, it was issued in the form of his statement and Carson’s press release.
Bernhard elaborated on the press release in a phone interview late Friday afternoon.
“The investigation is going to consist of me producing three checks which I don’t deny I’ve written,” he said. “Then it’s up to them to decide what to do. … Inadvertent violations are still violations, and I expect that there will be a fine.”
The subcommittee has several options, including asking a member of the ethics office’s enforcement staff to investigate, reviewing the matter itself, or referring the matter to another state agency or an outside lawyer.
Bernhard said he does not consider his conduct serious enough to be considered a “classic” ethics violation. “The [ethics] code sets parameters which we’ve all agreed to live with. There’s an implication with ethics that there’s a moral component to it. Nothing that I did was immoral. It was inadvertent. There should be a penalty, but I don’t think it rises to the level of an ethics violation, in the classic sense of an ethics violation,” he said.
He added: “It’s similar to a lobbyist being late one day in filing his report; it’s a violation, it’s dealt with, we deal with it — the idea being that we’re endeavoring to get 100 percent compliance. I made the contributions and reported them thinking that they were permissible. I was wrong.”
Asked why he didn’t bring up the donations in December when the board was discussing the legal opinion concerning volunteer campaign work, he said he didn’t remember. “Did I recall that I had written three small checks two year ago? I didn’t remember. I never thought about it.”