WASHINGTON -- Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., named Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, Tuesday to become chairwoman of the chamber's troubled Ethics Committee.
. . .
Tubbs Jones was elected to Congress in 1998 and has served on the ethics panel for six years. She was a Cuyahoga County court judge from 1983 to 1991 and Cuyahoga Country prosecutor from 1991 to 1998.
This fall, she was one of four committee members who conducted an inquiry into the House leadership's handling of allegations of sexual misconduct against former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. The committee found that House leaders were ``willfully ignorant'' of Foley's improper contacts with teenage boys who had served as House pages, but that no House rules were broken.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, described the Foley investigation as a ``whitewash,'' and said she doubted that Tubbs Jones could do much as chairwoman to improve the ethics climate.
``They didn't do their job last year, and I don't think they'll do their job next year,'' Sloan said. ``The problem is inherent with the committee itself and not with the chairman.'' By tradition, members of Congress set and enforce their own ethics rules.
The committee did not meet for most of 2005 as Democrats and Republicans clashed over new rules that Democrats complained would undermine the system.
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