2 Republicans leave page board

WASHINGTON —  Two Republican House members resigned Thursday from the board supervising teenage pages, accusing a Democratic appointee of failing to inform them about sexual and criminal activity by at least four youngsters.

The board’s chairman, Rep. Dale E. Kildee (D-Mich.), supported the Republicans, blaming House Clerk Lorraine C. Miller -- the day-to-day administrator of the page program -- for failing to immediately notify page board members of all the inappropriate conduct.

Miller, appointed by the House Democratic leadership, said she followed a zero-tolerance policy toward the teenagers, who were expelled and sent home. But she did not directly respond to the accusation that she was lax in telling the board what had happened.

The resignations by Reps. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia suggested that supervision problems echoed those revealed a year ago when Republicans were in charge.

At that time, page board members said they weren’t informed of sexual come-ons by Rep. Mark Foley ( R-Fla.) to former male pages. Foley resigned his seat in September 2006, and the scandal was one reason that Republicans lost control of the House.

Pages are high school students who run errands for lawmakers and learn about Congress while attending high school classes at a congressional school.

Brown-Waite wrote a scathing letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) charging that Pelosi had “learned nothing from the lessons of the Mark Foley scandal.”

Brown-Waite said four pages had been dismissed this year “for serious criminal acts and for inappropriate sexual indiscretions.”

A House Republican official said the criminal activity involved shoplifting. The official could not be quoted by name because he wasn’t authorized to comment on the issue.