Taft receives reprimand for ethics violations

The action ends the ethics case against Taft, who leaves office Jan. 7.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Gov. Bob Taft received one last, unpleasant reminder Wednesday of an ethical slip-up that tarnished his second term in office when the Ohio Supreme Court publicly reprimanded him for failing to report numerous gifts.
The unanimous vote from a court dominated by fellow Republicans was another low point for Taft, whose great-grandfather, President William Howard Taft, served as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court after he left the White House.
In its ruling, the court said Taft's conviction on ethics charges -- he pleaded no contest to four counts last year -- violated court rules regarding the proper conduct of lawyers.
Taft, 64, who has been an attorney since 1976, acknowledged in his plea failing to report golf outings and other gifts and was fined 4,000. He was the first Ohio governor to be charged with a crime while in office.
Matter concluded
The reprimand, which ends the ethics case against Taft, fell between other sanctions the court could have considered, from no punishment at all to revoking the governor's law license.
"The governor is pleased that the matter is concluded and that the court recognized his reporting error was nothing more than an oversight," spokesman Mark Rickel said.
Taft has no regrets over his handling of the reporting failure, he added.
"He's always said that it was unintentional," Rickel said. "He came forward, he fully disclosed, he admitted to his errors and accepted all the consequences."
Taft, whose law license has been on inactive status since 2002, has talked about teaching after leaving office, not practicing law.
The reprimand is a small part of Taft's problems, especially compared to the perceived role he played in Republicans' loss of most statewide offices in November, said Gene Beaupre, a political scientist at Xavier University in Taft's hometown of Cincinnati.
"In terms of the average citizen this is a footnote soon forgotten," Beaupre said Wednesday. "It's much overshadowed -- a cold shadow, I might add -- by all that came before it."
Polls have shown Taft's voter approval rating as low as 11 percent, worst of any Ohio governor and at the bottom for the nation's governors.
The Office of Disciplinary Counsel, an arm of the state Supreme Court, said in April that Taft violated Ohio's code of professional conduct for lawyers, and Taft later signed an agreement admitting to the violation.
Court's decision
The court's 6-0 decision constitutes the reprimand, which goes in Taft's attorney registration record. Five of the justices are Republicans and one, Alice Robie Resnick, is a Democrat.
Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton did not participate because her husband, Jack Lundberg, played golf with Taft on some of the outings he failed to report.
The justices agreed with a recommendation from a court board that hears complaints about alleged wrongdoing by lawyers.
In its six-page ruling, the court noted there was no evidence that Taft had purposely tried to hide the gifts and said that the governor was guilty of an oversight.
The court also said there was no evidence any of the gifts were given as bribes and referred to Taft's prior clean record as an attorney and his "long and previously unblemished career in public office."
The court also noted that Taft had been punished already by the criminal justice system.
Taft "conceded this ethical lapse and acknowledged in his public apology his personal failure to maintain the standards of integrity to which all public officials must adhere," the opinion said.
The ruling also distinguished the reprimand for Taft from harsher punishments for other attorneys who also didn't disclose required matters. In those cases, which involved suspending attorneys' law licenses, the lawyers "had deliberately withheld that which by law they were required to reveal," the court said.
Makings of the scandal
The charges against Taft, who could not seek re-election this year because of term limits and will leave office Jan. 7, stemmed from the governor's failure to report 52 gifts worth nearly 6,000 that he received over four years while in office. The case spiraled off a scandal in which a Republican fundraiser was convicted of stealing from a 50 million state investment in rare coins, which contributed to the Republican Party's loss of the offices of governor, attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer Election Day.