Std-Ex Guest Commentary: Independence Needed for Real Ethics Reform

If the Legislature is really going to tackle ethics, it needs to form an independent committee

The Standard-Examiner editorial page carries a thoughtful and informative guest commentary this morning, by LaWanna Shurtliff, our recently-retired Legislative District 10 House Representative, on the subject of Utah legislative ethics reform. Speaking from the perspective of a Utah legislator who co-chaired the House Ethics Committee for the previous six legislative sessions, she unreels a series of anecdotes revealing why the current ethics discipline system is a failure.

According to Ms. Shurtliff, the current system, whereby ethics complaints are heard by an ethics committee composed of legislative peers, a labyrinth of social, psychological and political factors prevents ethics complaints from even being filed in the first place, let alone to be fairly heard and determined.

Toward the bottom of the article Ms. Shurtliff issues a strong call for a change in the way ethics issues are decided on the hill:

If the Legislature is really going to tackle ethics, it needs to form an independent committee.
This committee should be given the charge to restructure the rules so they are more definitive.
They should have investigative powers along with independent legal counsel. Until this happens, legislators will be protected.

Unfortunately, Ms. Shurtliff's commentary tails off there. It would have been helpful, we think, if Ms. Shurtliff had given us a heads up on any pending legislation which would address this issue. We believe Ms. Shurtliff is right; but it would be a heck of a lot easier to get aboard Ms. Shurtliff's Independent Ethics Committee Bandwagon, if she had provided a pointer to those pending ethics reform bills (if any) which we could support.

Of course in Ms. Shurtliff's defense, there are "as many as 29" ethics reform bills pending on the hill, so we believe she can be forgiven for being unable to readily zero in on particular bills with remedial independent ethics committee provisions. We spent about a half hour earlier this morning searching through the morass of pending Utah legislation ourselves, by the way; and we couldn't find anything addressing that topic either.

So for purposes of discussing this morning's LaWanna Shurtliff guest editorial, we'll propose a two-tiered approach:

1) Don't fail to chime in on Ms. Shurtliff's general proposition, i.e., her proposal to replace the current "peer-based" ethics committee with one composed of "independent" members and support staff. We think it's a danged good idea. How about you?

2) And If anyone can provide us a pointer to any currently pending bill which approaches this issue, we'd like to be the first to know. We're aware of several legislators who regularly read this blog. Hopefully one of them will be willing to lend a helping hand with this.

Take it away, O Gentle Ones.