The Iowa House Ethics Committee has unanimously dismissed a complaint alleging Republican Representative Dean Fisher of Montour has violated House rules by voting to commit state funding to private schools and helping start a new school.
Fisher backed last year’s law that created state-funded Education Savings Accounts to cover private school tuition and other expenses. He’s board president of the Tama Toledo Christian School that’ll open next year.
“(Fisher) claims he held up his campaign promises to his constituents…and he claims the complaint is politically motivated and simply a difference of opinion on legislation signed into law,” Representative Anne Osmundson of Volga, House Ethics Committee chair, said during today’s meeting in explaining Fisher’s response to the complaint.
All six Republicans and Democrats on the ethics panel voted to dismiss the complaint.
“I am concerned about what the complainant has stated. It just gives me a bad feeling overall,” Representative Monica Kurth, a Democrat from Davenport, said. “However, I don’t think it rises to a point of being a violation of the ethics code.”
Representative Stanley Gustafson, a Republican from Cumming, is another member of the panel. “I don’t think that Dean Fisher’s personal interest was necessarily the driving force behind the effort to have vouchers for a private school,” Gustafson said.
House rules say members should abstain from voting on bills that are a conflict of interest due to personal gain, but teachers in the legislature, for example, routinely vote on state spending for schools because the bills have broad benefit.
Barbara Kalbaugh of Dexter filed the complaint against Fisher and spoke with reporters at the statehouse. “Fisher’s actions are self-dealing and self-servicing,” Kalbaugh said. “Some would say they’re corrupt and the House Ethics Committee is letting him get away with it and that’s shameful.”
Fisher released a written statement after the committee vote.
“This complaint was clearly just a politically-motivated attempt to smear me,” Fisher said. “It’s wrong to attempt to use the mechanisms of government to attack someone you simply disagree with on policy.”