The Ethics in Government Act, Conflict of Interest Laws and Presidential Recruiting

The federal conflict of interest laws are involved in the recruiting and confirmation of the political leaders for the executive branch of our government in ways that warrant careful description and assessment. Central to the description is the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 that requires the president's nominees to disclose publicly the details of their personal financial interests, thereby creating records that the public and the press may scrutinize for potential conflicts of interest.' By manifesting the recent shift to ''sunshine in government that markedly distinguishes public sector posts from jobs in other parts of the economy where personal and financial privacy is carefully protected, the Ethics in Government Act may be in danger of becoming a scapegoat for all that is most difficult and frustrating in presidential recruiting. Whether the Ethics in Government Act has in fact shifted the balance too far, thereby effectively barring otherwise highly-qualified persons from serving in Washington, will be the subject of congressional oversight hearings that are scheduled to take place well before the 1984 presidential election.2 At issue in these hearings will be the relative impact on presidential recruiting of such diverse factors as the Ethics Act, the long-standing conflict of interest statutes and the limitations on executive branch pay levels.3 In the meantime, however, the presidential transition has focused greater attention than ever before on efforts to prevent future conflicts by identifying and resolving problems prior to the time a presidential nominee enters office. For persons who do agree to accept nomination by the president to Senate-confirmed positions, the confirmation process itself can be a most rigorous test. As evidence of how central the conflict of interest issue has become, each committee of the Senate now refrains from reporting presidential nominees to the full Senate for confirmation prior to receipt of assurance from the Office of Government Ethics that the nominees will be able to assume office legally uncompromised by their personal financial interests. Although most of this practice regarding the identification of conflicts of interest is new, the related substantive law is not. President Reagan's administration is the first to come into office since the passage of the Ethics in Government Act which, in addition to its public financial disclosure requirements, also established the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to provide overall direction of executive branch policies related to preventing conflicts of inter-