Real ethics reform or a sham?

Last year, Utahns for Ethical Government (UEG) launched an initiative to pass real ethics reform in the Utah Legislature. The initiative would have ended gifts for legislators, created a citizens' ethics commission with real teeth, and given citizens a role in legislative ethics investigations.

Republican legislators quickly criticized the initiative as unnecessary. Republican Party leaders panned the initiative. Sen. John Valentine complained that the intent of the initiative "is to punish legislators." However, party leaders became worried when polls showed that the overwhelming majority of voters favored the initiative.

In response, the Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bill, claiming it to be serious ethics reform. Their bill, however, was the equivalent of the "fox guarding the hen house." The same legislators who opposed the initiative didn't complain about their own version of ethics reform. Perhaps it was because the new law avoided punishing legislators while at the same time giving them a pass on ethics reform.

The new law passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature isn't real ethics reform. It is only a sham.

Under the new law, the only way a citizen can file a complaint with the legislative ethics commission is to witness directly an ethical violation. Citizens can't ask the ethics commission to investigate a legislator if they only suspect an ethics violation. They have to actually see it happen. That's an impossibly high standard, something the designers of the bill must have known.

Of course, a fellow legislator can make a complaint, but that doesn't happen often. Legislators typically either seek to protect each other or are afraid they will be punished for raising an ethics complaint. In 2008, when former Rep. Phil Riesen told the media about an ethics violation by a legislator, a retaliatory ethics complaint was filed against him. That same year, alleged ethical violations by Republican legislators in Utah County in arranging for the construction of a Republican Party parade float went uninvestigated by the Legislature.

Under the new law, public disclosure of an ongoing investigation stops it. A legislator easily could leak the news of an investigation, thus leading to publicity that would actually end the investigation. Such a thinly-veiled escape route makes the new bill a sham.