The committee may continue work on those probes in the new session without a full committee vote.
Ethics must also address internal issues, including setting the panel’s rules and hiring a new staff director, following the December resignation of its staff director and chief counsel, Blake Chisam.
Because the panel’s staff director is selected in a bipartisan agreement, the committee cannot hire a new top aide until Democrats appoint a ranking member to the panel.
In the meantime, a Bonner spokesman confirmed Tuesday that Kelle Strickland will continue to serve as the lawmaker’s counsel on the panel.
In the previous session, when Bonner served as ranking member, the Alabama lawmaker and then-Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) proposed improvements to several areas under the committee’s jurisdiction, including ethics training, the financial disclosure process and forms documenting privately sponsored travel.
The committee unveiled a new tracking system for ethics training in 2010 but did not make public changes to the other targeted areas.
The committee will relocate to office space in the Longworth House Office Building in the 112th Congress. The Appropriations Committee will move into the basement office suite that had housed the Ethics panel.
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