Just to get the discussion started this morning we'll spotlight a thoughtful editorial appearing in today's Standard-Examiner, harping once again on the sorry condition of ethics reform in the Utah legislature. Today's editorial falls close on the heels of Tuesday's editorial, which put the focus on lobbyist reporting. The Std-Ex is on a roll on the topic of ethics reform. We'll add that we agree with the Std-Ex editors 100% on this issue. From this morning's editorial:
They may be bluffing again, but the possibility exists — unlikely as it may be — that Utah lawmakers are getting themselves into the mood for meaningful ethics reform.As the Std-Ex editors observe, even the best-intended ethics reform legislation faces an uphill fight in our legislature under its present mode of operation, whereby the gatekeepers of the status quo, legislative leadership, exerts tight control over unfavored bills, especially at the committee level.
We know: This is familiar territory. Between annual legislative sessions, or in the early days of the actual sessions themselves, one or two optimistic lawmakers will talk about lowering the dollar limits on gift reporting, banning the freebies outright or placing some sensible restrictions on the expenditure of campaign contributions. But it almost always comes to naught.
Take the 2008 session, for example. Sen. Greg Bell, R-Fruit Heights, sponsored Senate Bill 273, titled “Regulation of Gifts.” The bill aimed to, among other things, require “that gifts of food or beverage be reported by” a public official’s “name if the expenditure exceeds $15, rather than the current $50 threshold” and would have required “that gifts totaling $30 within a calendar day be reported by” a public official’s name, “rather than the current $50 threshold.”
All pretty reasonable, but it’s fate, according to the Legislature’s own Web site, was to fail to even get a hearing in committee — the most preliminary step a bill must take if it is to have a shot at being heard by the entire Senate.
For reasons like these, we rarely are confident that lawmakers will do the right thing when it comes to revealing what freebies they are getting from lobbyists. But hope is a good thing to have in your heart — it crowds out the cynicism — and we’re experiencing a smidgen of renewed hope as the result of last week’s Government Operations Interim Committee meeting.
It seems to us that the only way we'll ever clear out the current bottleneck is to replace current leadership with opposition candidates who are more responsive to the will of the electorate. And what are the chances of that, we ask?
Being the curious type, we navigated to the State Elections website this morning and looked at the 2008 election contenders in the races involving the four top legislative leaders. We list below the opposition posture in those four races:
State Senate
John Valentine (Dist. 14 - Orem) - Senate President - Unopposed
Curt Bramble (Dist. 16 - Provo) - Majority Leader - Two challengers (Republican & Democrat)
Bramble, it seems, faces a GOP opponent at the May 10, 2008 GOP State convention.
State House
Greg Curtis (Dist. 49 - SLC) - Speaker of House - Two Challengers (Constitution & Democrat)
David Clark (Dist. 74 - Santa Clara) - Majority Leader - One challenger (Demograt)
Yeah, we know that this data is somewhat rudimentary, and that much depends on the quality of legislators who are elected in 2008 who will not occupy top legislative leadership spots. Nevertheless, we believe the above information provides something of a springboard for the beginning of a WCF discussion on this topic.
And we'll throw in our own two cents: assuming that a change in legislative leadership will trigger a more enthusiastic legislative response to proposed ethics reform legislation, we're with the Standard-Examiner -- hopeful.
But we're certainly not going to bet the farm that there will be substantial leadership changes on Capitol Hill.
And what say our gentle readers about all this? What are the odds that any of the three opposed GOP legislative leaders will be knocked off?
Update 4/24/08 8:28 a.m. MT: One of our favorite Utah blogs, The Sidetrack, provides some fresh and interesting information regarding Senator Bramble's intra-party challenger, Jacque deGaston, who has created much political heat for the incumbent Senate Majority Leader, in connection with the hotly contested Senate Dist. 16 race.
