News
6/15/2009
Now, Time for Real Ethics Reform
Michael Fleming
June 15, 2009
Senator Karen Peterson showed real moxie and political courage in bucking her own Democratic Senate Leadership to ensure a vote on a bill to open our legislature to the light of public scrutiny.
HB 1 – which applies the Freedom of Information Act to our state legislature – is now law and the state is better for it. But Senator Peterson’s parliamentary prowess notwithstanding, any jubilation at its passage should be tempered by the sheer banality of its intent.
Most citizens would be surprised to learn that until this past Friday, our elected representatives on the Joint Finance Committee could actually conduct their official meetings behind closed doors. (Ironically, in one last cynical, symbolic gesture of contempt, the JFC met privately to agree on a state employee pay cut minutes prior Friday’s bill signing.)
The extraordinary difficulties in gaining passage – indeed, just the consideration – of such common-sense legislation evidence a pernicious mentality of entitlement at the root of the problems facing our state government. Left festering during the last decade of one-party rule, it is this casual corruption that has resulted in unchecked, out-of-control spending and driven Delaware to the edge of a $900 million budget deficit cliff.
In recent weeks, the News Journal has detailed troubling revelations about current and former members of the General Assembly and jobs they and their family members’ have landed with state agencies or institutions like DelTech and others that receive taxpayer funding. Once again, it might come as a shock that our state has no rules prohibiting legislators from taking positions with state agencies whose budget and operations they are supposed to oversee.
What’s more, there are no requirements that legislators even disclose if a member of their family is employed by a state agency or state-funded organization.
How can this be?
Following similar embarrassing reports suggesting nepotism and serious conflicts of interest last year, a group of concerned citizens launched Republicans for Government Reform and Openness (ReGRO) to advocate for much-needed ethics reforms. At that time, at least one-third of the General Assembly were themselves working in state agencies or had close family members in a government role.
The then-Republican controlled House of Representatives approved a package of important changes that unfortunately went on to meet its quiet demise in a Senate desk drawer at the end of the last session. These reforms haven’t been heard from since.
Now, further reports have exposed the waste, duplication and sheer extravagance of state government spending including details on the payroll of one Department – Education – where 25 percent of its employees make over $100,000 and a full quarter of its organization are administrative staff.
It is impossible not to connect-the-dots between the state’s desperate budget situation and an insider’s culture that has run amuck in the halls of our capital.
The Governor and the Democrat-controlled General Assembly should act quickly to restore public confidence in the budget process. This includes immediate adoption of new laws that:
• Prohibit any legislator, once elected, from taking a job in state government or any agency or institution that receives significant funding from the state.
• Ban legislators from advocating or using their influence to gain employment or favorable treatment of family members in state agencies.
• Require legislators to provide full disclosure of all family who are currently employed in state agencies.
• Similarly, legislators should provide complete disclosure of all family members working as lobbyists or in companies that conduct business with the state and the nature of that business.
The state legislature benefits from diversity of experience and profession. Teachers, police officers, transportation engineers and others who have spent their careers in government should not be prohibited from serving. Yet public office should never be used as a stepping stone to a government pension or a feathering of the family nest. Our elected officials must decide if they go to Dover each day to serve the interests of the public or themselves.
HB 1 is a small, promising shimmer of light. It is now well past time to open our government’s windows all the way.
Michael Fleming is a founder of ReGRO (Republicans for Government Reform and Openness).
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