Ethics debate heating up online

Want to know more about the citizen legislative ethics initiative?

Utahns for Ethical Government — the initiative sponsors — and legislators who oppose the measure are sparring through online conversations, allegations and responses.

You can read the 25-page petition online at utahethics.org.

At that site you can also read a response from UEG over what it calls "misinformation" that has been "taken out of context" from the petition itself and from seven public hearings held around the state to get residents' input.

Meanwhile, at least two legislators — Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, and Rep. Lorie Fowlke, R-Orem, both attorneys — have written their own legal analysis of the initiative, pointing out what they say are numerous unconstitutional, illegal or otherwise problematic elements in the proposed new law.

Hillyard's analysis can be found at: www.senatesite.com/Documents/2009/EthicsDraftMemo.pdf, while Fowlke's work can be found at: utahpolicy.com/featured_article/rep-lori-fowlke-analyzes-ethics-initiative.

No doubt other online analyses will become available as the debate over the initiative picks up over the next 12 months.

In a memo titled "Setting the Record Straight," UEG supporters say they debunk 19 specific misstatements now argued by initiative opponents.

UEG leads off with the argument that Democrats and others who want to weaken the GOP control of state government are behind the initiative.

It is true that the initiative is supported by both former GOP and Democratic legislators, and by former GOP Gov. Olene Walker, as well as political independents as the UEG memo states.

But it is also true that a number of the initiative supporters were active in repealing the Legislature's private school voucher law in 2007, a bill that was supported by most legislative Republicans and signed into law by former GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

GOP leaders say anti-voucher backers, emboldened by their victory at the polls two years ago, now seek — via the strict ethics proposal — to beat back conservative agendas in the current Utah Legislature.

Some GOP legislators say UEG's real goal is to paint initiative opponents so darkly as to defeat them in the 2010 or 2012 elections.

One House Republican says he believes UEG wants to gather enough signatures by mid-November to get the initiative before the 2010 Legislature. There it would likely be defeated by conservative GOP lawmakers. And UEG, like anti-voucher advocates did in the 2008 legislative elections, could then use that vote to defeat conservative lawmakers in the 2010 election — when the ethics initiative would be on the ballot.