An Aye on Ethics
The House passed out a series of ethics bills today. In many ways I couldn’t be more pleased to see the legislature take some action on an issue that I know is of utmost importance to the people in our district. You can see the five bills on the right side of this blog page under “Recent votes” and click to see the full text. They deal with stricter conflict of interest disclosure forms (to include all state office holders from Governor to legislators, school board, and even candidates for those offices), ban on gifts from lobbyists over $10.00, creation of an independent ethics commission, and restrictions on campaign expenditures. I’d have liked stricter standards on a few of the bills, a total ban on lobbyist gifts for instance rather than the $10.00 limit.
All the bills were passed without much fanfare on the floor although there were many comments. However, considering the public uproar surrounding ethics I almost expected the Capitol bells to start pealing in celebration. The question remains as to what will happen if both the independent commission put forth by the legislature that changes the state’s constitution thus requiring a vote of the people AND the ethics initiative gets signatures sufficient to place it on the ballot as well and BOTH PASS in November. Will the change in the constitution supersede or invalidate the ethics initiative if it passes as well? Legislative research has said they don’t actually know how that will all play out. It is clear that the independent commission aspect of the initiative would be invalidated, but what would happen to the other components of the initiative like the code of conduct remains to be seen.
The Salt Lake County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner was this evening and it was a really lovely event. I have the pleasure of serving in two counties as District 20 spans both Davis and Salt Lake Counties. I sat by two gentlemen who were both first time attenders at this event and were so invigorated about getting involved in campaign work in the U.S. Senate race this year. We had a great discussion about what issues were important to them and how best to get people engaged in the political process. Thomas Wright, SLCounty GOP chair, did a fantastic job with the event.
The best part of the evening was seeing an extensive collection of White House china that included place settings from Lincoln, , Hayes, Johnson, Roosevelt, Bush, and others. Our neighbor Ron Fox was helping with the exhibit and, as he so frequently does, brought this exquisite and artistic piece of history to life.
By the way, someone pointed out tonight that the session is 1/4 of the way over. We are down 11 days with 34 left. I do not feel like we have done 1/4 of the work so that just means we have some very busy days ahead.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:41 am
I think the legislature and Sen. John Valentine proposed a better solution for an independent ethics commission than the ethics initiative drafted by Mr. David Irvine. 3 former judges and two former legislators would sit on the independent ethics commission rather than 5 people drawn from a hat. Yes, David Irvine wants the house & senate majority & minority leaders to draw their picks from a hat and if they don’t come up with a unanimous decision of the 20 individuals the first 5 signers of the petition would be able to chose. This is extremely flawed (read the initiative if you haven’t).
February 19th, 2010 at 3:41 am
Both are horribly flawed proposals. The legislative proposal ensures extremes of outcomes with complete secrecy leading to obstruction that the public will not be allowed to know of, or persecution by a zealous and totally partisan committee which will have no minorities or women members most of the time. It will also be populated by people who have significant earnings from governmental jobs/pensions and little outside experience with conflicting interests. The UEG proposal does nothing to ensure a variety of experience or interests on the committee, either. The legislative proposal requires the complainant to be a co-conspirator. The UEG proposal requires the complainant to act as the prosecutor and investigator. Neither of these extremes is a good option for the citizens of Utah.
What Utah needs is an independent counsel nominated by the governor and confirmed with a two-thirds vote of the bipartisan legislative ethics committees that can investigate allegations regarding any elected public official residing in the State of Utah (from member of Congress to special service district council members). The independent counsel should have full powers of investigation, automatic time limits for any investigation that can be expanded by a majority of the State Supreme Court, but no power to file and prosecute criminal charges. The independent counsel would submit his report of findings and recommended actions to the appropriate ethics committee or public attorney (federal, state, county, or local) for prosecution. The complainant can be anybody — just one person needed. The independent counsel’s office should be silent except for confirmation of receipt of a complaint and disposition of the complaint. All documents produced during the investigation should be made public at the end of the process, except those the counsel gets permission from the Supreme Court to keep confidential — the court could order their release at an appropriate later date. The parties of the investigation can speak publicly, as can witnesses since public awareness can lead to the discovery of new facts. No complaints should be accepted, nor reports issued, and current investigations should be suspended for 60 days prior to any election involving the target to minimize the use of the process for political motivations. The budget for the counsel’s office should be fixed with an annual COLA on a per complaint basis (i.e. something like $250,000 for base office operations that may not be spent investigating any complaint, and then a limit of no more than $100,000 to investigate any single complaint or series of substantially similar complaints — maybe the limit might apply to a target of investigation regardless of the number of complaints). Time and funding limits should prevent a rouge counsel from persecuting a target endlessly. LGRC, Gov’s Counsel or other public attorneys could then be used by the public official to defend the official if the allegation is within the scope of their activity. A target could, of course, retain private counsel and be eligible for some reasonable reimbursement if independent counsel found “no reason to believe and no further action should be taken” or “reason to believe, but actions were within scope of duties, and no further action should be taken”.