LITTLE ROCK — Who would have dreamed of arguing that holding elected officials to a higher standard would be unconstitutional?
Probably the same folks who argued that term limits and annual sessions for the Legislature would be in the best interests of the people.
The House Rules Committee voted last week to allow state representatives to accept campaign contributions during legislative sessions, an egregious and obvious repudiation of an ethical standard embraced by predecessors who understood that a little distance between incumbents and special interests during sessions was a good thing because it took the pressure off of lawmakers to dance to the lobbyists' tune during periods in which lawmakers assembled ostensibly to do conduct the people's business.
Not this current crop. This lot understands nothing but grabbing as much as you can while you can. There is, after all, only so much political patronage that can be passed around, only so many cushy government jobs that can be created for former legislators, once term limits have kicked in.
Currently, a House rule forbids members to accept contributions from 30 days before to 30 days after a regular legislative session. Now that lawmakers will be meeting on an annual basis starting next year-in the off years between the lengthy sessions we've come to refer to as the Legislature's biennial sessions, lawmakers will assemble in Little Rock for a purportedly brief budgetary session-some obviously don't want any silly rule impeding the lobbyists' ability toline their pockets. That "off" year is always an election year for the House of Representatives, whose members' terms run for two years.
"If we didn't suspend that rule, then the people running for re-election wouldn't be able to raise any money because we would be in a fiscal session," state Rep. Robert Moore of Arkansas City later said.
Forgive me if my heart doesn't bleed. Under the terms of the constitutional amendment that established these biennial fiscal sessions, they must begin in early February of even-numbered (election) years and can last no longer than 45 days (and that's only by a three-fourths vote of the membership for a one-time 15-day extension past the regulation 30 days). The primary is always near the end of May, leaving plenty of time for fund-raising.
I'll let you in on a little secret. Lobbyists are easy targets, but as often as not (and in some cases more often than not) it's the politicians who go looking for favors from special interests, not vice versa. In the Arkansas Legislature, they even have committees that do little more than manage the members' social calendars so that no sponsor's dinner or reception or hunting trip conflicts with another.
But back to the matter at hand. House Parliamentarian Tim Massanelli was quoted by our man Seth Blomeley as saying that the state Ethics Commission views the rule prohibiting fund-raising during legislative sessions as unconstitutional because it gives challengers an undue advantage over incumbents, since challengers aren't likewise constrained.
"Ethics Commission Director Graham Sloan said later that it isn't the case," Blomeley reported. "He said the rule used to be a state law and was struck down by a federal court in the late 1990s. After that, he said, the House and Senate 'took the high road' and incorporated the law into their rules. The court decision doesn't apply to internal rules of the House and the Senate, Sloan said."
So much for the high road, at least in the House Rules Committee. According to a Senate spokesman, the prohibition is intact in the upper chamber and there has been no move to dispense with it, giving us a clue as to why the Senate and not the House is often referred to as "the upper chamber."
The House Rules Committee further diminished its colleagues' standing by refusing to endorse rules changes proposed by Rep. Dan Greenberg of Little Rock. He wanted to require the House Communications Office, a.k.a. the House Propaganda Office, to provide "independent and unbiased services to all members" and publicly identify members requesting such services, e.g., issuance of self-serving news releases in election years.
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Associate Editor Meredith Oakley is editor of the Voices page.
Editorial, Pages 89 on 09/27/2009