The recent ethics survey of employees at the Public Regulation Commission has already led to a few changes at the agency, including unspecified internal investigations.

At the same time, an ethics subcommittee is working to craft an ethics curriculum for employees, and PRC chairman Sandy Jones said he's looking into getting training for commissioners as well.

Issues raised in comments written by employees on the surveys led to the investigations, although that's all a spokesman could say about them.

"We cannot disclose any information related to an ongoing internal investigation," PRC spokesman Gerald Garner Jr. said.

As part of the 32-question survey, employees were asked to give comments about the agency. Some of them contained "comments, allegations, opinions and viewpoints which exceeded the survey's extent and varied from its scope. Some responses contain allegations of wrongdoing, violations of state policies and derogatory comments about other employees, former and current," a PRC official said.

Those were withheld from the media this week, although raw data of the responses and other comments from the survey were released.

Even Jones said he doesn't know what the redacted information is about.

"The general counsel told me yesterday they have started looking into some things. I don't know if they are new or a part of something else," he said.

Results of the survey were released Monday, and some employee comments were released a day later. Among other things, it found that 85 percent of employees who responded had seen unethical behavior at the agency in the past year.

At the same time, about half of the respondents said they had been asked to do something they thought was unethical by a supervisor or manager.

Of those who responded, 80 percent said they think there is a different ethical standard for commissioners than for employees of the agency.

Eighty-eight percent of respondents said PRC management doesn't provide adequate information or training on ethical issues and 79 percent said they hadn't ever received training on what is considered ethical.

Jones said Friday he'd like to change that, for both employees and commissioners. He said that a five-person subcommittee working on an ethics program is to act quickly.

"It's not 'get to it when you can,' " he said the members were told. "It's part of their job now to look at it. It's their priority."

Commissioners, too, will get more information about working for the agency, which regulates everything from utilities to insurance and motor carriers.

"We know if you get elected to a school board, you go to New Orleans for a school board training," he said. "We know if you get elected to the Legislature, you go to a boot camp for lawmakers. We know they teach new congressmen those things they need to learn.

"If you get elected to the PRC, there's zero. You walk in and there's a straight-up learning curve."

Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog at www.greenchilechatter.com.