Published: July 17, 2008 08:31 pm         

The right thing

Manchin’s welcoming of ethics commission probe is a good sign

Many years into the future there will still be chatter in West Virginia about “Garrisongate” and the Heather Bresch degree controversy at WVU.

Mike Garrison is winding down his first and only year as president of the state’s land grant institution of higher learning and instead of a “State of the University” address, he is cleaning out his office. That’s what happens when you, and/or your selected staff, make terrible decisions.

So the wheels are churning forward to find a new leader and direction in Morgantown and while WVU clearly wants to put the matter to rest and move on, there are still questions to be answered.

Enter the state Ethics Commission.

The group has contacted WVU and a probe is under way. As is policy, the ethics panel won’t discuss details of any work it is doing until such a probe is deemed complete. If misdeeds are uncovered, they’ll tell us.

We have complete faith in the work the ethics commission undertakes, so we’ll wait and see what its exploration turns up.

It also is interesting that Gov. Joe Manchin, father of Bresch, has again invited a full and complete investigation. His communications officer, Lara Ramsburg, made it crystal clear the Manchin administration welcomes the digging — even suggesting Scotland Yard or the FBI can be brought in to take a look.

“There’s absolutely nothing to hide,” Ramsburg told The Register-Herald.

When asked about Republican gubernatorial candidate Russ Weeks’ call for the Legislature to also sponsor a separate investigation, intimating that Manchin had to be involved with the awarding of the unearned degree to his daughter, Ramsburg says while the assertion was “absolutely politically motivated” on the part of Weeks, in her opinion, the governor would not rebuff or be bothered by a legislative review.

“And that’s why we truly welcome any additional investigation so that people can have whatever answers that they feel they haven’t received at this point.”

We aren’t absolving anybody here, but the Manchin administration has unequivocally stated its position.

So let the Ethics Commission do its thing, we’ll be anxious to hear and report its findings.

And one more thing on this subject — we definitely think, as we’ve pointed out before, that there is another person of interest in this cluster bomb that isn’t all too clean.

Paul Speaker, the head of the executive master’s program at WVU when Bresch was allowed to walk across the stage and have the degree in question conferred upon her in 1998, should be held responsible for his actions, or lack thereof.

Speaker had to know; yet he let it happen.

Why?

Joe Manchin wasn’t the governor, or even in elected office at that time, and Mike Garrison wasn’t the president at WVU either.