WHO DEALS WITH ETHICS OF ETHICS COMMISSION?

The first thing you have to learn about ethics is this: There is no black and white.

If ethics of any kind -- moral, religious, political, business and all the others -- enjoyed some clarity of understanding, it would be easy to be an ethical person or politician or business owner.

In 1991, the Missouri Legislature saw fit to create a state ethics commission. This happened at a time when most of the nation was seized in a fit of putting limits on campaign contributions and limits on lobbyists.

While such limits have done little toward their intended purpose, they have raised the awareness of millions of Missourians and Americans who now regard them as an impingement on their First Amendment right to free speech.

The Missouri Ethics Commission was charged with enforcing such sticky issues as conflicts of interest, lobbying laws and campaign-finance disclosure laws.

In practice, the commission has had little effect on any of these areas, but it has always been there just in case -- just in case someone raised a stink, which meant the commission would have to actually do something.

There haven't been a whole lot of messes for the commission to handle. But a while back a federal court struck down Missouri's limits on campaign contributions. This meant donations to candidates could be any amount, and many candidates and their supporters took advantage of the no-cap situation.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, reached the campaign coffers of candidates for statewide offices as well as the state Senate and House of Representatives.

At 9 a.m. Jan 24, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Missouri's contribution limits were legal. Immediately, the question was whether or not the limits should be enforced right away or at some later date to be set by the ethics commission. In a decision unremarkable for its wisdom, the commission, in essence, gave candidates and their contributors four more days to make unlimited donations before the old caps would be enforced.

There have been suggestions that the ethics commission took what might generously be called an unethical position. After all, the ruling came on Monday. Why not enforce the limits immediately? That's what Attorney General Jay Nixon recommended.

But the commission apparently fell victim to the intense political pressure of those who wanted just a few more days to hit up potential donors for big contributions. Indeed, phone lines were steaming for the four-day grace period as the arm-twisting revved up.

But worse than the commission's failure to enforce the law immediately was its decision to discuss this policy matter behind closed doors. Even after a challenge from representatives of news organizations, the commission met in executive session, claiming the lawsuit that had challenged the contribution limits in the first place had been sent back by the Supreme Court to a lower court and, therefore, was still "pending litigation," which is one of the few exceptions to the state's Open Meetings Law.

Bull hockey. The commission met behind closed doors because it didn't want anyone to witness its deliberations as it wrestled with the issue of enforcing the contribution limits or allowing more time for unfettered check writing.

The commission took the coward's way out, which is the route most frequently chosen by those with little regard for openness and public access to the workings of government. Sadly, in the eyes of many, the commission broke the law. Now where do Missourians go to lodge a complaint about the ethics of the ethics commission?