ETHICS FAILURE

The best that can be said of lawmakers’ mishandling of a legislative ethics bill is that at least they kept the issue alive. By voting to review the issue – which was the subject of an extensive examination last year – lawmakers showed they are incapable of passing even mild changes to the rules that govern their behavior in Augusta. The only hope is that while another study is under way, they will find their backbones.

Following the recommendations of a legislative advisory committee on ethics, Senate President Beth Edmonds and House Speaker Glenn Cummings sought to clarify and strengthen the conflict of interest definition. The advisory committee rightly decided that the current language requiring lawmakers to recuse themselves from legislative action only when they would enjoy a “unique and distinct” benefit is too narrow. Under the presiding officers’ bill, LD 1008, a conflict would arise when legislation would benefit or harm a lawmaker, an immediate family member or economic associate, which includes employers “to a degree that is significantly greater than similarly situated persons or entities.” This appropriately would result in more recusals, but would not, as critics charge, prohibit teachers from serving on the Education Committee, for example. The proper standard should, however, prohibit a retired teacher from voting on an increase in retirement benefits for educators.

LD 1008 would have clarified that the public can file complaints against sitting lawmakers. Two years ago, members of the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices voted 2-2 to not pursue a complaint filed by a conservation group. Two commission members said they believed they did not have jurisdiction to investigate a complaint from an entity other than a lawmaker, despite assurances from the Attorney General’s Office that it could.

The bill also required that the Ethics Commission proceedings be conducted in public once the commission decides a complaint should be investigated. It goes further than the advisory committee’s suggestion by requiring only two votes in favor of an investigation if the commission was missing its fifth member.

These needed, yet minor improvements were too much. The Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee recently unanimously agreed to replace LD 1008 with a resolve to have the Ethics Commission review a decade’s worth of complaints to see who filed them and how they were handled.

More study is not necessary. Further, the idea of counting up complaints misses the point that current rules are too lax and so result in few complaints.

Lawmakers must use this study not to duck the issue but to come up with tougher standards to strengthen and clarify ethics rules.