Senate Ethics Committee finalizes report, finds witnesses credible and adopts amended text unanimously

The Senate Ethics Committee on March 7 completed and adopted its final report, voting unanimously to add a sentence saying the committee found the witnesses who testified to be credible and to approve a package of conceptual edits to the draft report.

Committee members said the edits were largely stylistic but included a few substantive clarifications: insertion of a conclusion sentence on witness credibility, consolidation and rewording of paragraphs summarizing the legislative auditor's testimony on alleged waste and an "artificial division" of an Agile contract, and inclusion of factual notes tied to a Secretary of State filing cited as an exhibit.

Mister Carroll, committee counsel, said he had placed proposed language into the draft conclusion and read the proposed sentence into the record: "The committee found all witnesses who testified at the adjudicative hearing to be credible, mister chairman." Committee members then made a conceptual motion to adopt that language; a voice vote carried unanimously.

Members also debated how to present language derived from the legislative auditor's memo and testimony. The committee elected to retain a factual summary that the legislative auditor, Angus McKeever, testified his office "substantiated the allegations involving Senator Ellsworth's actions related to Agile contracts as instances of waste and abuse" and that there was a quoted finding of "an artificial division of the contract contrary to state law." The committee agreed to delete two subsequent paragraphs that counsel and several members worried risked stating legal conclusions rather than factual testimony.

Senator Smith pressed to add two factual paragraphs (numbered in the working draft as 14 and 15) referencing a sworn statement by Bryce Eggleston and a Secretary of State filing for Agile Analytics; special counsel and staff identified the filing as exhibit 35 and agreed to cite it directly. The committee agreed conceptually to include the paragraph noting that the Secretary of State filing lists officer-and-director information relevant to the committee's factual findings.

The committee also asked staff to expand the timeline section to note when respondents' witness lists were reviewed and the committee's determinations about witness relevance and admissibility during the March 7 adjudicatory hearing.

After a brief recess to allow staff to incorporate edits, the committee approved a motion accepting all conceptual amendments discussed in the meeting and then voted to adopt the committee report as amended. A committee member said the final approval was "unanimous," and the chair declared the motion carried; the session then adjourned.

The report as amended will be circulated to members for final review and signature before a clean, signed copy is delivered as the committee's final report.