Gov. Kate Brown was clear about one thing when she took office in the wake of John Kitzhaber’s resignation in February. She wanted higher ethical standards for Oregon politicians, and she laid out a legislative plan to achieve them.

At least one of Brown’s proposals has made it through one house of the Legislature and faces no serious opposition in the other. It would expand the state’s Government Ethics Commission to nine members, shorten its timeline for investigation of complaints and allow it to continue its work even if a criminal investigation into the same action begins.

In addition, House Bill 2019 would reduce the governor’s control of appointments to the commission by giving him or her only a single appointment that could be made without recommendations from leadership in both parties and both houses of the Legislature.

Unfortunately, what the bill does not do is require the commission to put some teeth into its decisions regarding ethics violations by public officials at every level of government in Oregon.

As The Oregonian newspaper noted in a recent article on the commission, it has taken a decidedly gentle approach when dealing with those who violate state ethics laws. In fact, the newspaper reported, Ron Bursin, the commission’s executive director, wants a negotiated settlement of every case brought to the commission. He sees the agency’s mission as largely educational and has been unwilling to go beyond that role.

We’ll agree the state’s ethics requirements can be difficult to sort out, and the less sophisticated the agency, the more difficult that can be. There is room, then, for an educational component to the commission’s work.

But there’s also room — and the commission must embrace the idea — to punish those men and women who looked at the rules and simply chose to ignore them. Examples of such cases are not difficult to find, as The Oregonian’s story made clear. In those cases, fines, not negotiated slaps on the wrist, are what’s called for. The soon-to-be newly expanded ethics commission must make that clear, both to its executive director and to the public at large.