At least one C Street resident cleared

At least one resident of the now-notorious C Street house in Washington has been cleared of an ethics complaint that he received cut-rate housing from the church-affiliated group that owns the place.

Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Kans., got a letter from the House Office of Congressional Ethics saying it had ended its inquiry.

No word yet from four other House members who were similarly alleged by a watchdog group to have accepted an improper gift in the form of cheap rent. The brick three-story Capitol Hill home is owned by an affiliate of a religious group known as the Fellowship Foundation.

Also there is no indication whether the Senate ethics committee has made any findings regarding the four senators who were named in a corresponding complaint.

Among the senators was John Ensign, R-Nev., a longtime resident of the group home across the street from the Library of Congress until he moved out last fall.

An Ensign spokeswoman said this morning she did not know if Ensign has received any information from the Senate ethics committee on the matter. He was said to be traveling but would be checking in later.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which had filed the complaints, said her group had heard nothing about the status of its complaint in the Senate.

Sloan said the House and Senate ethics bodies work independent of each other. So if the House has ended its investigation it does not necessarily signal the same for the Senate.

But, she added, the House Office of Congressional Ethics has a reputation of being more aggressive than the Senate. She guessed House investigators had difficulty pinning down the value of the housing in order to establish the complaint that it was below-market.

"OCE is pretty aggressive," Sloan said. "If OCE does not think it could find fair market value, I am not sure if the Senate would be able to either. The Senate is not really known for being aggressive about ethics."

The watchdog group, which also is known by its acronym CREW, challenged the living arrangements in April after a magazine reported the residents paid $950 a month in rent, a seemingly low amount for the leafy neighborhood.

"One cannot help but wonder exactly what the senators have done for C Street in return for this largesse," Sloan said at the time.

One outside ethics attorney predicted at the time it would be difficult for investigators to pin down the value of rooming at the C Street house. While the reported rent might be low compared to nearby apartments and hotels, it might not be out of line for boarding houses, wrote C. Simon Davidson.

If it is not already, the C Street house inevitably will become a stop on one of Washington's "scandal tours." It was there that Ensign was confronted by his roommates over his extramarital affair with an aide in early 2008.

For Ensign, the complaint was only one of the matters that was before the ethics committee. It also is looking into possible violations stemming from the affair.

Other members of Congress who were associated with the group house who ended up in ethics hot water included Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Chip Pickering of Mississippi.