Panel takes up bill to tighten ethics rules Proposal takes aim at conflict of interest, undue influence

AUGUSTA – Legislators would have to recuse themselves from votes more often and abide by more stringent rules about appearing before state regulatory agencies under a bill that would define legislative conflicts of interest and other ethical breaches more clearly.

Senate President Beth Edmonds’ proposal, which she presented Monday to the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee, is the product of last year’s work by a 15-member advisory panel that was created in the wake of ethical scandals in Washington.

But questions of ethics also come up in Maine’s part-time Legislature, whose members maintain associations with a variety of businesses and other interests while they are making and revising laws. Determining when conflicts occur is not always easy.

“This is a challenge of a citizen Legislature,” said Edmonds, D-Freeport.

Her bill would raise the standards for when a legislator must abstain from voting on a bill that may present a conflict of interest.

It also seeks to further restrict instances in which a legislator may represent clients before state agencies in order to avoid undue influence on those agencies.

Having a legislator appear before a state regulatory agency – especially if that lawmaker sits on a committee that oversees that agency – is “especially intimidating,” Edmonds said.

The law now allows legislators who are lawyers or other professionals to represent clients before state agencies, provided they do not refer to their legislative capacity. Edmonds’ bill would bar a legislator from representing a client before a state agency if that legislator is a member of the committee with jurisdiction over that agency.

A third major provision would give citizens greater ability to file formal complaints about legislators with the state ethics commission, which would winnow out frivolous claims.

Presently, the ethics commission has jurisdiction over complaints about legislators’ ethics only when other legislators make the complaints, but the law is unclear on whether citizen complaints can be reviewed.

House Speaker Glenn Cummings, a co-sponsor of the bill, said the boundaries of where conflicts begin must be redefined.

“As society has become more interconnected, intricate networks of relationships create situations where it is increasingly difficult for legislators to act completely independent of outside interests,” said Cummings, D-Portland.

The legislation helps to rewrite those boundaries and make ethics investigations more public and restore public faith “so that people can have more faith in the system,” he said.

The committee took up several other bills addressing campaign issues. Among them are measures calling for more restrictions on campaign disclosures and contributions, barring out-of-state corporations from contributing to initiatives, referendums or candidates for office, outlawing the placement of campaign signs on public property and requiring landowner permission before a campaign sign may be placed within an abutting right of way.