I didn’t realize that I subscribed to the hard copy of The Onion. But clearly I must, because I picked up the newspaper on my doorstep this morning and read the following:
A Senate plan to bolster state ethics rules would actually cripple the State Ethics Commission instead of strengthening it, stripping away much of its authority and transferring key powers to another agency…. Senator Frederick Berry, chairman of the Committee on Ethics and Rules, defended the bill, saying its authors were trying more than anything else to be evenhanded after listening to testimony that the Ethics Commission sometimes was overzealous.
HA HA HA HA!!! Oh my God, that’s hilarious — the Senate thinks the Ethics Commission has too much power!! No doubt that’s why the Senate has such an awesome ethics record recently! Oh please Senators, stop it, you’re killing me…. *wipes tears of laughter from eyes*
Oh wait a sec … that wasn’t the Onion. That was the Globe.
Now, let’s not mince words here. The Senate’s bill is a disaster. A catastrophe. Or, perhaps more optimistically, a bad joke — maybe they’re releasing the real bill later this week. There is just no rational explanation for this:
The bill would remove the right of the Ethics Commission to conduct hearings into the actions of public officials and to make findings of violations, a core part of its job.
Instead, it would turn over those duties to the state’s Division of Administrative Law Appeals, an independent agency that hears appeals from other state departments. That division, advocates said, is overburdened and not versed in the state’s convoluted conflict-of-interest law.
The Senate measure also would require the Ethics Commission to stop investigating a case if the attorney general’s office decides to launch its own criminal probe.
The Senate bill would keep the statute of limitations on ethics violations at three years. Proposals submitted by Governor Deval Patrick and approved by the House would extend the limit to five years.
Look, either we’re serious about enforcing the ethics laws in this state, or we’re not. Clearly, the Senate is not. Here’s hoping that sanity prevails in the conference committee, and that the measures proposed by the Governor and largely endorsed by the House are what emerge once the two versions are reconciled.
reached Pam because of her post front paged here yesterday.
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p>The Senate is not helping themselves here, the Herald and Globe were chomping at the bit to go after Patrick, the last thing the Senate wanted is to get themselves on the front page of either news paper, other than to bash Patrick a la DeLeo on the car story.
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p>They could have pinned a lot of the problems with Patrick with the willing participation of the news outlets. But maybe now that the “reform before revenue” Senate’s real plan to cut reform and increase taxes is out in the daylight we might have some meaningful compromises.
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p>Patrick played it well by not attacking and saying that they could work together to bring about reform.
Watch the political shuttlecock fly between the Massachusetts House and Senate. The House starts by serving up unwarranted pension benefits for incumbents. They completely disregard Massachusets voters when they object to exiting representatuves grabbing a pot of pension gold when they are voted out of office, especially if they voluntarily decide to leave
The Senate returns serve by trying to emasculate the Senate Ethics Committee; perhap they were on extended vacation when the Wilkerson fiasco came to light.
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p> And like a friendly game of badminton, players of the House and Senate will get together to discuss the game and remark on how much the shuttlecock resembles Massachsetts voters.
to see how these conference committees end up. Does the Senate go along with the House’s superior ethics bill? Does the House go along with the Senate’s superior pension bill? Or do we end up with the worst of both worlds? Or do we split the difference?
The Senate leadership really has no interest in addressing reform whatsoever. Murray should be ashamed of herself. It’s getting to the point where we clearly need new leadership there. Between “kaching,” her complete unwillingness to address real reform and her childish attacks on the governor (hello, we have real problems: we need grown ups), I just don’t think she’s the right person for the job.