It’s a state agency that spends $2 million of your dollars every year, making sure that politicians are doing the right thing when it comes to campaign finance.

The Texas Ethics Commission was set up to help promote confidence in government, but one man thinks taxpayers aren’t getting their money’s worth. The rules say we’re supposed to know exactly what every member of the Texas Legislature buys with their campaign donations. But two years ago, it seems nearly half of our elected officials broke those rules.

Then, all of a sudden, nearly all that ended. Now, lawmakers appear to be following the campaign finance rules.

The reason has very little to do with the state agency set up as a $2 million-a-year guardian of legislative ethics — and everything to do with one man, with his home computer, in Clear Lake.

AP

The Texas State Capitol

“I think the Ethics Commission is incompetent, completely incompetent,” John Cobarruvias said. “There is no other word to describe what they’re doing right now.”

He is something of an activist.

“You should have basic consumer protection,” he said.

In 2002, he was protesting the state’s oversight of homebuilders.

Now, he’s protesting the state’s oversight of the Legislature. And wondering whether the Texas Ethics Commission does anything at all. He looked at campaign finance recordsand found lawmakers spent about $1 million in campaign funds on their credit card bills. But nowhere did they say what they bought with those cards.

“Right,” Cobarruvias said. “You don’t know what he’s bought at all.”

It meant that tens of thousands of purchases that should have been disclosed were not. Did anyone at the Ethics Commission even notice?

“Oh, absolutely not,” Cobarruvias said. “The Ethics Commission has been absolutely worthless.”

Employees of the Ethics Commission don’t do interviews. Their chief counsel said they do audit campaign finance reports, and in the last fiscal year, the commission issued $700,000 in penalties.

Of that $700,000 total — roughly $678,000 were penalties for filing late. In other words, it often didn’t matter what was in the report, as long as it was filed on time.

“The system is very confusing and very complex,” Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said.

Sen. Dan Patrick doesn’t think the Ethics Commission needs more power. He would like them to do a better job explaining the rules to candidates and officeholders. And he thinks it shouldn’t have taken a man in Clear Lake to uncover the million-dollar credit card problem.

“The Ethics Commission should have caught this,” Sen. Patrick said. “It’s such a glaring problem to say you shouldn’t do this; it’s not the way it should be done.”

“This is what we want to see,” Cobarruvias said.

Since Cobarruvias raised the issue -- most lawmakers have now filed “corrected reports,” explaining what they bought with those credit cards. And most of it was run-of-the-mill: bottled water, gasoline, campaign signs.

“And I think that is just absolutely great,” Cobarruvias said. “That is what we’re looking for.”

But in some cases, he filed formal complaints with the Ethics Commission.

Since then, the Commission has fined eight lawmakers over issues he’s raised.

To put that in perspective, the Ethics Commission has only fined seven other lawmakers for any other issue in the last five years.

“They’re a database, and they collect this information and that’s about it,” Cobarruvias said.

It’s a paper trail that uncovered a problem in government — for both the people you elect and the ones you do not.