Ethics Measure Lacks Support

PROPOSAL DRAWS MIXED REVIEWS FROM AREA LAWMAKERS, CANDIDATES

Saturday, June 9, 2012

A proposed ethics measure drew mixed reviews Friday from Northwest Arkansas state senators and candidates.

“You can’t pass laws to make people good,” said Sen. Kim Hendren, R-Gravette. “The best way to weed out the bad apples is an election.”

The best ethics guarantees are voters, a strong Freedom of Information Act, press scrutiny and requirements to report all gifts and expense reimbursements, he said.

Regnat Populus 2012 is a nonprofit based in Little Rock attempting to get new ethics laws on the November ballot through a petition drive. If passed, the initiated act would forbid direct corporate and union contributions to state political campaigns; lengthen the time from one year to two years legislators must wait after leaving office before accepting a state lobbyist job, and forbid any gifts from lobbyists to legislators.

The group needs 62,507 signatures of registered voters to get the measure on the ballot. The threshold for the number of signatures needed is a percentage of the votes cast in the last governor’s election.

Jon Woods, Republican nominee for state Senate District 7 and a state representative from Springdale, supported the proposed extension of the cooling-off period but said the proposed limit on corporate contributions was a violation of free speech principles.

“I’m not going to name names, but I’ve seen members of the Legislature ask for and get committee meetings for people who became their clients three or four months later,” Woods said. “The people who were hiring them got the chance to be witnesses in these meetings.”

“So yes, I think the cooling-off period is needed,” Woods said. “Those committee meetings weren’t during a legislative session where laws were being made and money was being spent, but they were in the interim as we were getting ready for the next session.”

“The contribution part of it, though, I’d have to say is not the American way,” Woods said.

Diana Gonzales Worthen is Wood’s Democratic opponent. “I think the voters in my district will be overwhelmingly in favor of it,” she said. The reason is “One vote, one person,” she said. She also favors the measure because it allows for more transparency and accountability in government.

Sen. Cecile Bledsoe, R-Rogers, proposed a two-year cooling-off period but agreed to support the one-year limit after a consensus formed supporting it, she said. “I’m OK with it,” she said of the proposal. “I also think that if it gets to the ballot, it will pass.”

Sen. Sue Madison, D-Fayetteville, said the ban on accepting any gift from a lobbyist was so absolute, it would forbid a dinner or reception thrown by constituents for their lawmakers. These get-togethers are vital to the legislative process, she said.

“There’s not going to be significant influence on a member by giving us tuna fish on a cracker,” Madison said. “It’s not easy to go to a breakfast, then a lunch, then a reception and then a dinner in a day, but that’s when we get a lot of work done as lawmakers.”

The ban on direct corporate contributions while allowing contributions by political action committees is pointless, Madison said. “Most PACs are just corporations in another name,” she said.

Sen. Bill Pritchard, R-Elkins, said the measure could trap some lawmakers whose jobs could be defined as lobbyists before they got elected. “It wasn’t a problem for me because I was retired already, but there are people in the Legislature right now who have jobs that could be defined as being a lobbyist,” he said. “What are you going to do if this law passes? Tell them, ‘We’re sorry, but you have to quit your job?’”

“Rank and file people get us confused with Washington and think we’re being taken to expensive dinners every night,” Pritchard said.