Government
Jul. 26, 2002
Legislators Improve Their Self-Governing
DENVER - State lawmakers nationwide are policing themselves more than they ever have, a National Conference of State Legislatures panel said Wednesday.
A first-of-its-kind survey on legislative ethics laws in all 50 states revealed that, despite some room for improvement, legislatures nationwide increasingly are keeping a discerning eye on their members in an attempt to improve the public's perception of the work they do, said Peggy Kerns, director of the Center for Ethics in Government, a branch of the Denver-based national conference.
Most of the new ethics rules have come in the past two decades, some as a result of scandals in various states, she said at the group's annual meeting here, which has attracted hundreds of lawmakers, lobbyists and legislative workers from all 50 states.
"The public is demanding a higher standard of conduct from its leaders in both the public and private sectors," Kerns said. "Legislatures are responding by passing tougher ethics laws and establishing more internal controls to enforce these laws."
According to the survey, all 50 states have such things as guidelines for disciplining rule-breaking legislators, whistle-blowing laws that protect employees from retaliation and rules that require lobbyists to disclose whom they represent and how much they spend on lawmakers to influence legislation.
But the survey also found that not every state does such things as train new legislators about ethics rules, limit how much campaign money lawmakers can accept, restrict how much lawmakers can earn in honoraria or prevent legislators from hiring relatives to state jobs.
While the survey makes no recommendations on what new ethics rules state legislatures should pass, it should be used as a guideline for what states could do to police themselves, said Kansas state Sen. Lana Oleen, a member of the panel that spearheaded the project.
"It can be used as a springboard, a handbook to see if legislatures need to firm up their laws based on what other states have done," Oleen said. "It provides a basis to work from."
But Rutgers University professor Alan Rosenthal warned state lawmakers to be careful not to go too far.
Rosenthal, another member of the panel who helped compile data for the survey, said it is not only impossible but also inadvisable to try to remove all the public's perception of unethical behavior in the nation's statehouses.
"Lawmakers need to conduct some business behind closed doors; otherwise, you get everyone posturing, and nothing gets done," he said. "To give the public everything it wants, you would have to eliminate democracy. You need to let [legislators] negotiate in order to resolve the issues that come up."
Preventing lawmakers from accepting even a cup of coffee from a lobbyist, as the Wisconsin Legislature has done, limits their ability to interact with the people who know the issues, he said.
"The legislative process is mostly open, but it can also be messy," Rosenthal said. "Some rules get to be a little ridiculous. It's a question of finding the right balance."
Charles Asbhy
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