U.S. Rep. Bill Sali needs to get his house in order. This has nothing to do with how he votes in the House of Representatives, but how the basic everyday operations run in his office.

Recently, multiple revelations have raised eyebrows and caused Idahoans to wonder if anyone is in charge of the congressman’s staff.

Consider these missteps:

• Sali is only one of two members of Congress to fail to file his legally required campaign finance report on time with the Federal Election Commission.

• Ultimately the report is filed 13 days after the deadline — but spokesman Wayne Hoffman said at the time it still wasn’t right.

• The problem: Hoffman had said the campaign had paid back some of its $135,673 in campaign debt. But the report didn’t show that.

• Hoffman told the Spokesman Review’s Betsy Russell: “Here’s the bottom line: We’ve been working on this for more than a month with the FEC, and unfortunately the problems still haven’t been fully corrected.”

• Russell found that the Sali campaign has filed 41 amendments to its required finance reports since 2005.

• In an interview with KTVB-TV, Hoffman feigned mock surprise when reporter Ysabel Bilbao brought up the issue of the missing finance report. The Sali spokesman gasped and quipped “Really?” in an effort to downplay the importance of the matter.

The last example is indicative of the shabby way Sali’s office seems to handle housekeeping issues. Consider Hoffman. As a reporter for the Idaho Press-Tribune and the Idaho Statesman, he was a stickler for detail. He expected politicians to follow the rules and kept track of when they did and didn’t. His cavalier attitude as a Sali staffer is surprising.

The real bottom line is that it is important to file reports on time and accurately — it’s not a joke.

But the trouble doesn’t stop with the finance reports. The dual employ of Hoffman as an official spokesman for Sali’s congressional office and as his campaign spokesman is unusual and inappropriate.

Hoffman says he can keep his jobs separate by using different phones and stepping out of the congressman’s office to deal with campaign-related calls.

It’s a shell game. The truth is, if he’s handling campaign matters, he’s not available at that time to answer questions in his official capacity as a spokesman for the office. Sali’s decision to let Hoffman wear two hats essentially means that taxpayers pay for his campaign press secretary and he doesn’t have to cover another salary out of his campaign coffers.

These issues raise questions about the management of the congressman’s office, his decision-making ability and even his ethics. In order to have Idahoans’ trust, he needs to get his operation in order.

This editorial isn’t a statement of whether Sali should be re-elected and doesn’t evaluate his views as a member of Idaho’s congressional delegation. It is a call for him to act quickly to correct the problem.