An advisory committee has offered helpful suggestions for improving Maine’s conflict of interest rules and the process for investigating violations. Lawmakers should adopt their recommendations that would, among other things, broaden the conflict of interest standard and allow the public to file ethics complaints against lawmakers, to maintain public confidence.

That confidence was shaken last year when the Maine Ethics Commission faced concerns that Rep. Thomas Saviello, the environmental manager of the International Paper mill in Jay and then a member of the Natural Resources Committee, violated legislative ethics rules by voting on and developing policies that affected his employer. The commission received requests for an investigation from Rep. Saviello and the Conservation Law Foundation. After a closed-door meeting, the commission allowed Rep. Saviello to withdraw his request and later voted 2-2 to not pursue the CLF complaint. Two commission members said they felt 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.

This left the public with no place to go when they believed a lawmaker had acted improperly.

The ethics advisory committee, created by House Speaker John Richardson and Senate President Beth Edmonds, was right to make fixing this problem a priority and recommends that state law be amended to allow for ethics complaints from the public. The group took the additional step of recommending that Ethics Commission proceedings be conducted in public once it decides a complaint should be investigated. There would be criminal penalties for frivolous complaints.

As for conflict of interest, the 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. The panel suggests that a conflict arises when a lawmaker is in a situation to give a benefit or create harm, that is “significantly greater than the benefit or harm experiences by others in the same enterprise, profession, trade, business or type of employment.”

It justifies this standard by saying it is the size of the class that is affected that matters. If 200 or 2,000 people benefit from legislative action, this is not a conflict. If only two or three people, including the legislator or a family member or associate, benefits, this is problematic. This addresses the retort that tougher ethics rules would prohibit teachers from serving on the Education Committee.

The committee also recommends changing House and Senate rules to encourage lawmakers to avoid conflicts when a lawmaker’s business, employer or a close relative’s employer would receive a greater benefit or loss than the general public.

These recommendations would help lawmakers more clearly understand where the boundaries lie to avoid conflicts, real or perceived. If enacted by lawmakers, these changes would help reassure the public that legislators are representing the voters’ interests.