Legislative conflicts of interest common

In Maine, the presiding officer allows a member to vote "present." And in Wyoming if you don't get permission beforehand to vote "present," and you still refuse to vote, you are automatically recorded as a "yes" vote. You can see how other states deal with conflict of interest voting at www.ncsl.org/programs/ethics/voting_recusal_categorized.htm.

In Utah, some conflicts could enrich or otherwise benefit lawmakers or their relatives, employers, businesses or civic organizations.

A new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows that Utahns overwhelmingly want tougher conflict of interest disclosure and want Utah legislators to be able to vote "present but abstaining."

Pollster Dan Jones & Associates found that 84 percent of Utahns want lawmakers to be able to abstain from voting on a bill on which they have a personal or professional conflict, while 77 percent of Utahns want more disclosure, including having legislators who represent clients to disclose such clients.

Known or hidden

For all the concern, some conflicts can actually be good. For example, a physician/legislator may use his expertise to improve health laws, even though it may also benefit him and fellow doctors. The question is: How do legislators avoid or disclose their conflicts?

In the 2007 Legislature that ended in February, at least 70 of Utah's 104 part-time lawmakers introduced one or more bills that appeared to create a conflict of interest, according to a computer-assisted analysis by the Morning News.

The newspaper looked at investments, business holdings and organization memberships of members, and what their bills would do. In some cases, the newspaper used information that was not provided in the legislators' own conflict of interest forms — as those forms may have been incomplete — to build personal/professional dossiers on legislators.

As may be expected, some members pursued a much higher percentage of bills with conflicts of interest than others.

Reps. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, and Gregg Buxton, R-Roy, had the highest such percentages: 100 percent each.

Wimmer, a West Valley police officer, introduced bills including amendments about discharge of firearms, penalties for sexual offenses and kidnapping, criminal statute of limitations amendments and addressing penalties for murder of a child — all items that he could deal with in his law enforcement duties.