Disappointing Democrats

— Two higher-education political scientists got quoted the other day to the effect that Arkansas Democrats finally may have landed on something helpful with this ethicsreform initiative.

These experts were Jay Barth at Hendrix College, an avowed Democrat, and Art English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, long a good-government advocate with Common Cause.

Barth said state Republicans behave in a risky way by resisting the initiative and saying essentially that they rather like corporate donations. English said the issue is thus smart for Democrats.

Perhaps, in this one case, these learned gentlemen were a little light on the science and a touch heavy on the politics.

I doubt that Democrats can reap such an advantage. I’m less doubtful, but quite sure, that they do not deserve to reap such an advantage.

First, this threepronged proposal, with bans on gifts and revolving doors and corporate contributions, is hardly a cinch to get to the ballot and do anyone any immediate good. That’s a lot of signatures to amass in a compressed twomonth period—nearly 63,000, that is, by July 6.

Second, the proposal is neither of Democrats nor by them nor for them. It sprang from a party-transcendent government teacher at Catholic High School in Little Rock, Paul Spencer.

He says the initiative reflects not partisanship, but the “zeitgeist.” That means the prevailing sentiment of the time, which is that our political system is corrupted and rendered dysfunctional by money.

Third, the high-profile group calling itself Better Ethics Now that formed to hire professional canvassers to assist Spencer is bipartisan.

Consider its three chairmen: Brent Bumpers, confirmed Democrat; Jim Keet, confirmed Republican; and Baker Kurrus, maybe a kind of old Rockefeller Republican, but, mostly, a good guy not identified by partisanship or traditional politics.

Fourth, it is true that elected state Republicans such as Lt. Gov. Mark Darr, and state Reps. John Burris and Terry Rice have been outspoken that a ban on corporate contributions would be folly, in their self-serving estimation.

But Democrats have been perhaps even less admirable in their passivity or silence or disingenuousness.

Gov. Mike Beebe and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel say, oh, all right, they’ll be for it if it gets to the ballot.

I remember 1988. The Democratic governor at the time, named Clinton, actually led an initiated act for ethics reform.

Yes, Will Bond, the state Democratic chairman, has said he supports the effort. But so has Doyle Webb, the state Republican chairman. Neither has brought his party aboard.

It is state Rep. Kathy Webb of Little Rock who, alas, competes to be the most disappointing of all Democrats on this matter.

An unflinching progressive of rare competence, she became the first openly gay member of the Arkansas Legislature, then set out to get herself accepted in the legislative culture.

She succeeded spectacularly, deploying expertise and integrity and emerging as co-chairman of the Joint Budget Committee.

Somewhere along the way, I began to wonder if she had transcended acceptance in the culture and achieved rather deep immersion in it.

So now she tells me she is not against the ethics initiative necessarily. She says she is simply disappointed in the way it’s written.

It has to do with the ban on gifts for legislators.

She asks: What if some foundation or institute wanted to pay for her attendance at a conference to learn about the particulars of complex policy?

That very thing has happened, she says, and has proven vital in the termlimits era in which novice legislators need to learn quickly.

She raises the question as if it’s a tough one. It isn’t.

Her sole responsibility is to the taxpayers. In turn, it is the taxpayers’ sole responsibility to pay for whatever educational sojourns the legislative leadership determines appropriately helpful to her, or to any legislator, toward vital understanding of emerging and vexing policy.

No matter how noble or expert, a private foundation or institute should not be paying to educate the people we elect. We should do it.

Public money can be wasted. It can be spent inefficiently. It can be abused. But, generally speaking, it is not as potentially corrupting to the public interest as private money.

We have public records for public funds—and public audits, pretty good ones.

Meanwhile, Arkansas legislative politics becomes ever more insular daily, practiced incestuously by the politicians and remotely from the public.

Just the other day this newspaper reported on Republican state legislators in seemingly safe seats who raise money for their own campaigns, then give of that money—donated to them, mind you—to more severely challenged colleagues seeking legislative office. That is one of the effects of a two-party system: What you give to your local Republican state senator is considered tantamount to a gift to the cause of Republicanism generally. Is it?

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John Brummett is a regular columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com.

Editorial, Pages 17 on 06/21/2012

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