By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com
It is not clear where Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs will come down in the case of the state’s embattled ethics reform amendment. But
“You act like a gift ban is the only part of the amendment,”
Maybe
The lobbyist-backed effort to dump the ethics reform amendment comes without a state ethics commission having rendered a single decision. The attack on the ballot measure called Amendment 41 continues to concern itself only with whacky scenarios, not actual events.
“It’s not simply the gift,”
The justices spent a lot of Thursday’s hearing trying to get each side to define public trust. Justice Nancy Rice phrased the question superbly:
“If I receive the Nobel Prize, I have not violated the public trust because…?” Rice asked, leaving the lawyers to fill in the blanks.
Arguing for the state, attorney Maurice Knaizer said winning the Nobel Prize didn’t violate the responsibility elected and appointed officials and government workers have to the people of
Dubofsky said the money that comes with the Nobel Prize exceeds the annual $50 limit that Amendment 41 lets elected and appointed officials and government workers or their families receive from private individuals. The amendment bans all gifts from lobbyists.
If the law of common sense applied, it would seem to favor Knaizer.
To follow the logic of Justice Hobbs, the way the ethics amendment and its implementing legislation are written, you seem to need the presumption of a quid pro quo. In the case of the Nobel Prize, that would mean the person getting the prize money would do the bidding of the Nobel selection committee instead of his or her public job.
Opponents of ethics reform lack any proof that this has happened. They deal strictly in what-ifs.
What if someone saw a lawmaker eating lunch or dinner with a lobbyist?
They might think the lobbyist was paying for the meal.
What if a planning commissioner’s children got college scholarships?
People might think she favored the people who paid her kids’ way to school.
Forget that you can’t control what people think.
Forget that no ethics commission has ruled on either of these circumstances or any other.
“Anything you do might be the subject of a complaint,” Dubofsky warned. A planning department soliciting information from a developer, “that would violate Amendment 41.”
Providing legislators with information that lobbyists paid to collect would also violate 41, Dubofsky insisted.
Here’s a minimal standard for a court case: Prove it.
These absurd charges should not be accepted at face value. The mere threat of crazy or vindictive ethics complaints should not be enough to overturn reform approved by 63 percent of voters.
“Behavior at the Capitol has changed dramatically because of Amendment 41,” Dubofsky said, as if this was a terrible situation.
Later, outside the courthouse, car dealers’ lobbyist Tim Jackson gave an example. In a single day during the last state legislative session, said
You wonder how an ethics commission would view those receptions. You continue to wonder because the ethics commission does not yet exist and has not made a single ruling or issued a single advisory.
But in
What if, what if, what if.
The refrain aims to deflect attention from the real purpose of the law suit challenging Amendment 41. It hopes to ensure that lobbyists can continue to do favors for legislators so that those legislators will continue to do what the lobbyists want.
“Culture change is a good thing,” said Jenny Flanagan of Colorado Common Cause, which initiated the ethics amendment. “I didn’t get free
Lobbyists can still go out to lunch with legislators. They just have to split the tab. No ethics commission ruling has stopped lobbyists from giving information to lawmakers. No ethics commission ruling has made eating at a buffet a conflict of interest. No ethics commission ruling has stripped a cop’s kid of a scholarship or taken charity from a hurt firefighter.
So far, the alleged injuries caused by Amendment 41 are either imagined or self-inflicted.
“Breach,” asked Justice Hobbs, “doesn’t that mean betraying your duties based on the facts?”
Not when you can thwart ethics reform by making up horror stories.
Copyright 2007 by Jim Spencer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
13 users commented in " Opponents of Ethics Reform Deal in Theory, Not Practice "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHow about putting this “controversy” in terms virtually anyone capable of reading and/or thinking can comprehend. What part of knowing right from wrong do the parties not understand?
LHKMAN has it right: What part of knowing right from wrong do the parties not understand?
Opponents are busily setting up an infinite number of straw men when there are no living, breathing examples to support the continuation of “business as usual” by lobbyists.
Having been a planning commissioner in two different Colorado communities large enough to be home-rule cities, I can tell you that we’re repeatedly instructed by city attorneys and planning directors that, “When in doubt, don’t do it.” “Don’t do it” meaning don’t accept lunch, don’t accept a gift of even minuscule value, don’t even TALK to people (citizens, developers, fellow planning commissioners, it makes no difference) about any active case that’s liable to come before the planning commission. Our decisions are supposed to be based strictly on the facts and findings presented to us in the formal planning commission public hearing, and nothing else.
When there’s a real-world example of a planning commissioner’s child being given a scholarship by a developer in exchange for that planning commissioner’s vote on a development proposal, THEN we need an ethics panel to look into it.
Until we have some actual rulings and cases, however, opponents are relying exclusively on smoke, mirrors, and dishonesty to cast aspersions on Amendment 41.
Unethical people will remain unethical, no matter what kind of “ethics reform” law is passed. Government needs to be more transparent, the news media needs to be more vigilant and less trusting, and the general public needs to be far more attentive and have higher standards than it does now.
From what little I know, I believe that our federal government is far more corrupt than our state government. Judging by the frontrunners for president at this time, I see no reason to expect much improvement with the next administration (or Congress or the courts), whether the Republican Party or the other Republican Party wins.
Step one: read the U.S. Constitution.
All parts. When these guys in the state
legislature were cramming the Ref C gouge
down our throats even my own
“representatives” in the Republican party
wouldn’t communicate with me via email and
what was her name that bad excuse for a
at the time majority leader Norma Anderson,
now grandmother at large, didn’t even HAVE
email to communicate with
her “constituants”!!
I actually sent emails
to other Republican members and asked them
to print them and hand them to her. Which
they did and stated “It was embarressing”
To be sure, this is representative govern-
ment?
Those people at the state house are lap
dogs for special interests, they have
no ETHICS nor will they EVER, to
answer your question: They DON’T
understand any part what so ever of
Right and Wrong. All they understand
is this thing called TAXING AUTHORITY
and SPECIAL INTERESTS
Just another example of political gaming. Forget to will of the people who elected me, I got elected so now I want my rewards and riches. I am now a noble they are but surfs
I know the state Senator from Arvada and her family. Sending kids to college with Pell Grants and scholarships is most essential to helping your child avoid a huge debt by the time he or she graduates. By including scholarships and grants in aid to children of
state legislators is “cruel and unfair” to those who are giving up alot to represent us.
Those in the Colorado General Assembly do not get properly paid to begin with, then this Amendment 41 comes along and hurts their college age children. No wonder those legislators who fit in that category hate this Amendment 41. I would too, were I in their place. ~ GP
Don’t kid yourself Urthpig, Colorado is
as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Colorado
is run by 12 influential powerful Denver
families. They own the state legislature
the courts, mayors, office holders, pencil
pushers. Ask Danny Omally union rep from
Boston, out to organize Denver water, he
told me there no place in the COUNTRY as
spider networked or corrupt as DENVER.
He called it the Spiderwebed East Denver
Cartel. His words.
The majority of us voted for the ethics law, period. I’ve tried to be neutral on the scholarships & Pell Grants but there does seem to be a higher proportion of officials’kids who get these than the norm. I put my g.child thru 2 years, now she is borrowing for the rest,and I help with medical, etc.I had to go in debt for a couple of years, thanks to the 9/11 stock market crash..and by the time she gets through graduate school she will be deeply in debt. It’s scary how much college costs, and sad to think of them starting out their life after college with such debts.
I wouldn’t mind a committee to take a look at the elected officials’ chidrens GPA, Act and SatI and SatII tests to see if the kids really earned the scholarships or not.
Danny O’Mally and his Boston cronies are kicking our butts in baseball and now they are trying to muscle in on our labor force? Is that what you are saying, Hammond?
Ya that’s what I’m saying, it’s all a
build up for the 2008 election because
the local “cartel” doesn’t want the
national attention which might spoil their
little deal here in River city. Obviously,
they don’t control the Feds. It’s a good
wedge to use to unionize the 1000 people who
work for that very strange taxing authority
called Denver Water.
Wildflower,
If people were smart they’d start being
smarter educational consumers. As a state
college/night school guy I worked for
years next to Ivy League people with
advanced degrees making the same as me only
with boat loads of debt for their high
priced education. To be honest, many of
them didn’t impress me despite their
credentials. That was 20 years ago, many
college degrees are even more worthless and
definately more expensive today.
Educational buyer beware.
Expensive degrees are no lock on a great
job, career or life, to be sure.
Their complaints are phony, they are playing the role of the Victim. I would point out, in the ex. of the child of an official who refuses a scholarship lest parent be accused of an ethics violation, that if mom or dad really needed it to get the kid in, they would stand and fight in the courts for the cause. They would tear the money with their teeth from the scholarship authority and dare some crusader to test the law on them and their kid. Instead, they fall on their swords, sobbing loudly and in public, holding up for the cameras this poor innocent babe with good grades. I pinch my nose and turn away.
I hate to sound like Dennis Hammon, George Pramenko, but what planet did you just arrive from? If legislators are not paid enough — enough for what, for crying out loud — I must have missed the picture of voters and party leaders holding a gun to the head of a would be legislator forcing him or her to run for office. If they don’t like the conditions of the job, they are free to withdraw from public life. The point still is: what part of right and wrong to they not know. Getting their kids to the head of the line for Pell grants is the kind of thing that puts all office holders in a bad light.
Don’t worry, Hammon, I’m not swinging over to your side. I still consider you a troglodyte and an example of one who sees the world only in black and white. Too bad. The various shades of gray are quite nice to view.
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