More ethics ideas

The Governor's Commission on Strengthening Utah's Democracy emerged with eight recommendations last week, thus throwing another hat into a crowded ethics ring. A tough ethics initiative, sponsored by Utahns for Ethical Government, is circulating in hopes of gathering enough signatures to make it onto the ballot in 2010. Various lawmakers are working on bills containing versions of their own reform in an effort to head off the initiative.

The governor's commission may well end up as a bill of its own, but the eight recommendations fall far short of what the initiative would provide. For instance, providing a three-member independent commission to quickly decide complaints on allegations of election and campaign irregularities pales in comparison to the five-member independent board the initiative would create, with power to apply a strict code of conduct on Utah's lawmakers.

Utah voters, who have been waiting a long time for politicians to come up with meaningful ways of regulating their own conduct, have been given little reason to be turned away from the initiative.

We do like the commission's recommendation for mandatory electronic filings of donation records for candidates, lobbyists, parties and PACs. Certainly, as we've said before, the state's Web site could be modified to make it much easier to see how much and from whom a lawmaker accepted a donation. But the rest of the recommendations seem to solve few problems.

We're particularly unimpressed with election day voter registration and automatic registration tied in with the filing of government documents, such as tax forms. Voting ought to be a matter of deliberation, thought and research, not a last-minute twinge of civic virtue. While ideas for making registration easy are essentially harmless, they do nothing to enhance democracy. The aim instead should be to encourage thoughtful democratic involvement.

Gov. Gary Herbert, who inherited the commission (it was started by former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.), has indicated he may compromise his opposition to campaign donation limits, which also are included in the recommendations. We hope he holds to his earlier position. Donation limits serve one purpose only — they empower incumbents. Challengers need to raise lots of money to buy name recognition, a commodity incumbents already possess. Immediate reporting and easy public access, while not a perfect solution, is best for democracy.

The ethics initiative calls for even tougher donation limits, which is one of its flaws. However, it contains other, tougher standards that deserve to become law. For instance, the governor's commission recommends a one-year moratorium on former lawmakers becoming lobbyists (which essentially is the case under current law). The initiative would extend that to two years.

The upcoming legislative session may provide the first really meaningful debates on ethics in memory. But unless lawmakers get serious about tough reforms, voters will have little incentive to lose interest in the initiative.