Too Much Affection for the Swag

A Weber County Forum tip o' the hat goes out this morning to the Standard-Examiner editorial board for this morning's top-drawer editorial, bearing the catchy headline, "Lawmakers who bag the swag".

For starters, the editorial highlights Governor Huntsman's surprise announcement last week, wherein firm ethics rules would be imposed, presumably by executive order, upon the Executive Branch of Utah Government:

In Utah, Gov. Jon Huntsman heard the call for reform. In his State of the State speech last week, he surpirsed his audience by announcing he would launch new ethics rules in the executive branch. From now on:

1. Executive branch employees will be banned from receiving gifts.
   
2. Any executive branch employee who leaves government srvice will be prohibited for two years -- a so called "cooling off" period -- from returning to lobby government.
   
3. The governor is also banning nepotism in hiring within the executive branch.

Imagine that: leadership on ethics reform.

Yes. Imagine that, indeed.

And the Std-Ex editors follow up with this delicious couple of paragraphs, in which they sum up the legislative ethics reform "game," without pulling even a single punch:

The House has repeatedly passed ethics reform -- virtually every year. But those bills always die in the Senate side and so never make it to the governor's desk for a signature. Cynics say the House enjoys the political benefits of passing the legislation, knowing they'll never have to conform because the Seante will do the wet work of killing bills after the fact.

Whatever. At least the House tempts fate by going through the motions. Over on the Senate side, the majority has too much affection for the swag.

Being the curious type, we navigated over to the Utah Common Cause Website, where we learned, among other interesting things, that the Utah Legislature's ethics rules are among the weakest in the nation:

1. Utah has no non-partisan, independent enforcement of any laws regarding governmental ethics, campaign finance or lobbying.
   
2. There are no limits on how much money an individual or special interest can contribute to candidates running for office in Utah - the Sky's the Limit.
   
3. Candidates and Party committees can transfer money from their own campaign funds to other candidates, thus "laundering" campaign money.
   
4. An elected official can receive up to $49 worth of benefits each day from a lobbyist without his/her name ever being revealed as the recipient of those benefits.
   
5. Utah law requires only a minimal disclosure of conflicts of interest for public officials, and does not have a comprehensive code of ethics, which directs them as to what they can or can't do.
   
6. With no law against the current "revolving door" system, public officials can move directly from a government job to the employ of those they previously regulated.

The Standard-Examiner is of course NOT the first northern Utah newspaper to editorialize on this subject. The Provo Herald chimed in on this topic on Thursday, followed by a good editorial rant in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune.

We'll say that it's pure joy for us to witness the northern Utah print media flogging the Utah Senate leadership by name. Senator Valentine and Representative Curtis definitely have their work cut our for them, we think. And we'd love to know how these two state legislators can so confidently assert that lobbyists on the hill have been neither"currying undue favor," nor influencing votes," inasmuch as current "rules" remain virtually non-existent.

And for those gentle readers who'd like to chip in their own 2¢, we provide the Utah Senate and House contact links here and here. Be sure to let your state senators and house reps know exactly what you think. As we all know, they just love to hear from their constituents, and absolutely crave citizen input.

Comments, anyone?