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By Dino Wei 魏思源
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The High Court on Tuesday found Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) not guilty of embezzling assistant fees. The court acquitted Kao of her corruption charge, reducing her sentence to six months in prison — commutable to a fine — for causing a public official to commit document forgery. The subsequent controversy extends beyond Kao’s individual case, centering on the judges’ legal interpretation of the legislative intent and budgetary nature of assistant fees, as it overturns established institutional practices and fundamental legal principles governing the use of public funds.
The High Court reasoned that assistant fees are disbursed in a lump sum and considered “substantial subsidies with flexible allocation” — therefore, once disbursed, the funds become the legislators’ property and can be spent at their discretion. As long as they are considered to be the legislators’ own money, their use would not constitute corruption. However, Article 32 of the Organic Act of the Legislative Yuan (立法院組織法) stipulates that legislators can hire publicly funded assistants in accordance with the law, with fees budgeted and paid for by the Legislative Yuan. Any portion of the funds corresponding to unfilled assistant positions or unpaid salaries that do not reach the cap must be returned to the national treasury. While in practice assistant salaries are processed through a legislator’s office as part of payroll, this is merely an administrative arrangement. It does not alter the legal nature of the funds as public money belonging to the national treasury, nor does it remove the statutory restrictions on their use.
Assistant fees bear the characteristics of public funds — they come from the national treasury, their use is restricted by law and the recipients of the funds must meet statutory employment requirements. Even if, as an administrative matter, the Legislative Yuan assists with processing salary disbursements, this cannot be taken to mean that the funds have become legislators’ property and are subject to unlimited discretion. Arrangements of the administrative process do not alter the legal nature of assistant fees.
The ruling equated the management method of assistant fees with a legislator’s discretionary authority, redefining the legal nature of assistant fees. Under this logic, whether assistants are actually hired or paid their salaries would be reduced to mere accounting and documentation issues, no longer involving the substantive rules governing the use of public funds. This not only significantly narrows the scope of the offense of corruption, but might reframe such conduct as no more than an administrative or documentary violation.
The potential consequences are deeply concerning. Regarding assistant fees as funds subject to legislators’ unfettered discretion would inevitably shake the foundations of the legislative assistant system. Practices such as falsifying assistant positions or underpaying assistants while overstating expenses would lack meaningful deterrence at the level of the Criminal Code, defanging oversight mechanisms. This is not merely a matter of adjudicating a single case — it is a critical turning point affecting legislative employment ethics, trust in the use of public funds and consistency in the rule of law.
Whether assistant fees are truly the legislators’ money is not merely an issue of legal technicality; it concerns the state’s basic understanding and attitude toward public power and public resources. In a democratic society, public funds must not only be used for public purposes, but must be lawfully used. Once this boundary becomes blurred, the impact extends beyond individual political figures, undermining the very foundations of public trust in the entire system.
Dino Wei works in the information technology industry.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
