Fight back against attempts to sweep ethics complaints under the rug

Sometimes, we can measure our impact by how the powers-that-be retaliate to try and stop good, grassroots organizing.That’s why it’s not surprising that the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board has proposed legislation that would prevent last summer's "Fire This Man/Take Down Bruce Rastetter" campaign from ever happening again.Ethics board director Megan Tooker - who refused to stand with us during last year's ethics complaint against Rastetter - is pushing a bad ethics bill right now that would weaken public input, oversight, and transparency of state ethics cases by centralizing power in the hands of one person, the board chair, to unilaterally throw out ethics complaints without a public hearing before the full board.

Help us stop powerful interests from sweeping ethics complaints under the rug even more.

• The House State Government committee passed this bill yesterday (to see how each committee member voted, click here)

• Take action right now by contacting your representative and asking them to vote no when this bill reaches the House floor in the coming days.

Last summer, CCI members successfully mobilized a huge cross-section of the general public all across Iowa after we filed a high-profile ethics complaint against Iowa Regent Bruce Rastetter for his attempt to use Iowa State University to legitimize a corporate land grab in Tanzania.Although the board threw the complaint out with a very shortsighted and narrow interpretation of what is meant to be a broad-based ethics law, we were still able to get a conviction in the “court of public opinion” because we attended the ethics board meeting and made our case directly to the entire board, as well as to the public through earned media.House File 209 is a blow to accountability and transparency and is almost certainly a deliberate attempt to hamstring the effectiveness of our work - a “shot-across-the-bow” retaliation for our hard-hitting, dynamic organizing campaign last summer.Will you help us prevent ethics complaints from being swept under the rug?  Contact your House representative and tell them to VOTE NO! RELATED UPDATE:Rastetter’s blatant abuse of power continues, but the public blowback is building.  Read our take here:  Harkin is right to pull papers from ISU Click LIKE and TWEET to ask your friends to take action, too.