The speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates thinks the ethics problems besetting some members of the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents are so serious that the board needs its own ethics watchdog, The Sun, a Baltimore newspaper, reported today.

The speaker, Michael E. Busch, was responding to allegations that the board’s chairman, David H. Nevins, violated an ethics policy by lobbying lawmakers on behalf of his employer, an energy company (The Chronicle, March 3 and March 9).

Mr. Busch was also responding to an article in Sunday’s Sun that said Marvin Mandel, another regent, had lobbied for the insurance industry in violation of the same ethics policy. Mr. Mandel, 85, is a former governor who served time in jail for corruption in the 1970s.