House to expand Page Board

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - The House wants to ensure that current and former teenage pages are no longer vulnerable to improper conduct by lawmakers like former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla.

A bipartisan resolution requires regular meetings of the House Page Board, which oversees the program, and adds members including a former page and a parent of a current or former page. Pages serve as errand runners while learning about Congress and attending a congressionally run school.

The measure was scheduled for a vote Friday. The sponsors are Reps. Dale Kildee (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., and Shelley Moore Capito (news, bio, voting record), R-W.Va., two page board members who were never informed of Foley's questionable e-mails to a former page until the lawmaker resigned Sept. 29.

Rep. John Shimkus (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., as chairman of the board, learned of Foley's e-mails in November 2005. While he went with the House clerk to confront Foley, Shimkus never convened a page board meeting.

The Kildee-Capito resolution expands the board membership to eight, including the former page and the parent. There also would be four House members — equally divided by party — as well as the clerk of the House and the sergeant-at-arms.

The previous board had five members: three lawmakers — two from the majority — plus the clerk and sergeant-at-arms.

"We look forward to operating the page program in an effective manner," Kildee said. The new board, he added, will ensure "the well-being of the young people who serve this House as pages."

Capito said the equal representation "takes it out of the political realm. There's no way there should be a partisan upper hand when talking about the governance of the page board."

She said she recalled only two or three meetings since joining the board in March 2005. Having a parent and former page gives the board "another set of eyes and ears" if a problem develops, she added.

The House ethics committee, in its report on the Foley case, said former House chief clerk Jeff Trandahl warned Shimkus that Foley was a "ticking time bomb" who had been confronted repeatedly.

The warning came in November 2005. The board chairman confronted Foley with Trandahl and told him to stop sending e-mails to a former Louisiana page.

When Foley resigned, Shimkus still had not convened the page board.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070119/ap_on_go_co/house_pages [link]