It seems like every week if not every day another Massachusetts politician gets embroiled in an ethical scandal. Marzilli, Wilkerson, Dimasi, Turner, Kujawski, Deleo, Rogers, Murphy (D-Lowell) among others. Whether it taking direct payments for pulic acts like Dianne Wilkerson and Chuck Turner or using your campaign account to pay for your car, then taking the per diem like Dimasi and Kujawski. The people of Massachusetts are rightfully losing confidence in government.
Speaker DiMasi has said that we have “very comprehensive, in-depth ethics laws in Massachusetts” when people first started talking about ethics reforms.
Do we really have comprehensive ethics laws? are they enforced? I think the answer to that is no, and no. Ethics committees in legislative bodies are notorious for protecting their own. And our ethics laws on basic things like separating campaign activities from official activities are severely lacking.
Under Massachusetts law it is legal for state legislators to use their campaign accounts to run “District Offices” and to fund their campaign websites, which often act as their “official websites” as well. For instance look at Jamie Eldridge’s State Representative website.
On the website he has information that for a Member of the US Congress would be on his/her official site, and campaign information including a donation button on the same site. It allows the representative to conflate official and campaign activities. That is ripe for ethical lapses. Under the US House Of Representatives Ethics Manual this would not be allowed.
Member and Committee Websites. Under rules issued by the Committee on House Administration set forth in the Members’ Handbook and the Committees’ Handbook, Member and Committee websites –
May not include personal, political, or campaign information; and
May not be directly linked or refer to websites created or operated by a campaign or any campaign-related entity, including political parties and campaign committees.
Further information on the rules governing Member and Committee websites is
available from the Committee on House Administration.As to Member campaign websites, the Standards Committee has advised that –
Such a site may not include a link to the Member’s House website; and
The Member’s House website may not be advertised on his or her campaign website or in materials issued by the campaign.
The Massachusetts rules are lax and should be tightened to more closely reflect the US House rules.
In the same vein it is permissible in Massachusetts to use campaign funds for official business. Including opening a “district office” and to hold office hours in that office and conduct official business in what is essentially a campaign office. This is expressly prohibited at the Federal level. It is legal therefore to be talking to your state legislator at their “district office” and then have them ask you for a donation to their campaign.
Reforms in these two basic areas would show that the Massachusetts Legislature was serious about enacting ethics reform.
We admittedly have an ethicly challenged state government…and the two “reforms” you suggest are the following:
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p>Prevent campaign funds to be used for websites.
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p>Prevent campaign funds to fund district offices.
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p>That’s all ya got? Never mind the free speech issues you run into regarding the website issue. Never mind the unintended consquences that will arise if such laws were passed (like state funding for district offices and websites–160 of them) these seem to be fairly lame issues. How do they address the rot in our system? Will these changes prevent special pension bills to pass for wired state employees? Will this stop the patronage? Will this stop the midnight deals where language is inserted into a bill at 3am and costs the state millions?
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p>Eabo, these are just silly ideas, given the problems we have. On a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of ethical problems, these issues are about a 1.
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p>Also, will you lose your attitude about Eldridge…it further undercuts your creditablity. You know I’m not one of his cheer leaders here, but you fixation on him is laughable. Singling him out for this is typical of you hypocritical approach to things. I won’t wast my time today, but when you brought up have stupid some Dems were for having campaign offices, I did the research and discovered that many (well, really just a few, because there are only a few) Republicans fund district offices with campaign funds and certainly all of the elected Reps fund a web site with campaing money.
BASIC ETHICS REFORMS
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p>These are basic low hanging fruits that would show that state legislators are ready to seriously look at ethics. You may be comfortable with state legislators being able to solicit donations in a “district office” I am not. You seem to want to protect the status quo Festus. What I am suggesting is to bring the state up to the basic ethics standards enacted by the Federal Legislature.
you’ve advocated to increase spending by millions. If that’s low hanging fruit, you have some pretty high standards.
You have managed to prove that Eldridge has a campaign website, that actually lists his accomplishments and endorsements, that was paid for by his campaign? Although you must have forgotton the last time he ran for State Rep. was almost 3 years ago.
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p>So how has such a travesty in ethics never been previously investigated?
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p>The official website also touts accomplishments, so how can you tell them apart???? Maybe its the DONATE button. In Diane Wilkerson’s case, the lack of a DONATE button on her official website was just an oversight.
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p>If we are talking campaign ethics, how do you feel about the 2 Republican candidates in Eldridge’s district who were reported to be giving away free gas in return for support?
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p>How about Jamie’s opponent who actually cut and pasted the senate district map from my website at http://www.actondems.org and pasted it on his campaign site?
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p>I don’t know who you are, but let me guess….does sore loser fit???
It wouldn’t be right for public resources to be used for campaigns, but I would call using campaign resources for public business good constituent service. Sometimes, I think we trip over ourselves trying to be ethical and we have this fantasy that we can somehow completely level the playing field of challenger vs. incumbent.
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p>In MA, in case you haven’t noticed, the legislative webpages are as boiler-plate as they come: basic biographical information, office contact information, list of committees on which one serves. There appears to be no way for the legislator to personalize it with information about the district or what exactly they are doing with the trust they have been given. Therefore yes, a campaign website is going to have legislative information since there’s no place else to put it.
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p>Some legislators, like my representative did for awhile, use their leadership bonuses to pay for district offices. Of course, it closed with a changing of the guard when she lost her chairmanship. If we really think this needs reforming then the state needs to pay for an office for each legislator (possibly more than one for the big districts in the west), but I suspect you Republicans would not appreciate such new spending and maybe neither would anyone else in the current situation.
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p>For either state or federal level, not only do I think it’s OK, I believe campaign and official sites SHOULD link to each other. Remember, not everyone is tuned to the what falls under politics and what falls under government. It shouldn’t be obnoxious nor really get into the details of the other jurisdiction, but constituents need to be made aware of which office to contact for which concerns. For example for Niki Tsongas on the contact section of her official site she can simply put a line on her member site saying, “For information about the campaign please see here.” Likewise on her campaign site she can say, “For constituent service and legislative information please see here.” I know I personally have had occasion when I would like to easily transfer from one site to the other and less activist people shouldn’t have to guess which is which.
This is his official site:
http://www.mass.gov/legis/memb…
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p>This is his campaign site:
http://www.repeldridge.com/
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p>Where does the official site include campaign info? Where does the campaign site link to the official site?
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p>I’m not seeing it.
I never thought I would come to his defense, but I believe his point was that the campaign website includes legislative information, not a link to the legislative site. The official site doesn’t mention the campaign, or much of anything else since as I mentioned above it’s very dry just-the-facts like the other official pages.
The House rules Eabo posted don’t say anything about legislative information being linked to. So, isn’t Jamie in the ok?
I believe that EaBo is advocating that the state adopt the stricter federal standards.
Jamie’s campaign website already meets the stricter federal standards. EaBo falsely claimed it didn’t.
Actually, what EaBo said was factually wrong. He said explicitly that the U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Manual would not allow Eldridge’s website, then proceeded to quote the manual, but nothing in the manual would disallow anything about Eldridge’s website. As EaBo quotes, the manual has two guidelines for campaign websites:
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p>Eldridge’s campaign website does not violate either of those guidelines.
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p>There is nothing in the Ethic Manual that says the campaign website should not include “legislative information.” And why should it, exactly? Is EaBo seriously proposing that a campaign website can’t cite the legislation accomplishments of the candidate? That’s a patently absurd requirement.
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p>So EaBo’s prime example of the campaign website restrictions being too lax does not actually violate any of the website restrictions he proposes adopting!
I think Eabo kinda makes an interesting point.
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p>Although, I don’t think the point he makes has anything to do with the ethical lapses in MA’s government – it seems Eabo was looking for an excuse to force in a gratuitous shot at Wilkerson, DiMasi, et. al. And Skeffington is right about Eabo’s obsession with Eldridge. The point he makes has more to do with how constituents access and interact with their legislator through technology and how can we make it more transparent and concise.
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p>Honest question:
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p>How do residents distinguish between an “official” site and a “campaign” site and how does the General Court define the two types of sites, if at all?
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p>For Eldridge, I find the two sites mentioned in this thread:
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p>For Senator Scott Brown, there are three sites:
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p>[Let me disclaim upfront that I’m not trying to use Brown as an example of good or bad. I care not that he has three sites and Eldridge has two.]
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p>Although Brown has two self-maintained sites and one of them is a “campaign site”, the “non-campaign site” does seem to have overlap with the real campaign site. To me, even though they have different domains, they seem like two arms of the same site. So, in essence, even though it appears that Brown has made an effort to seperate district business from his campaign site, his site is basically the same as Eldridge’s. I’d also not that Both Brown sites lack “Comittee to Elect Scott Brown” (c) copyright lines like the one on the Eldridge page.
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p>Looking closely at both legislators’ collective sites, I think the point Eabo is on to is that it would be nice to have one highly interactive and advanced “offical” website for your Rep and Senator that is a non-partisan, constituent-focused, virtual office type site that is inviting to all constituents to come and participate and and link-up with constituent service resources (meaning not the sparse mass.gov pages). My own though is perhaps it could be a site that is uniform for all General Court members and a neutral, almost like a facebook-like design that will not turn off constituents registered to different parties and also does not urge people for a campaign donation.
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p>Then allow them to have a personal site that they can construct themselves in the best possible light and ask for volunteers and donations paid for by the campaign fund, and have clear disclaimers on each that one is the “official” site and one site is for campaign and propaganda purposes only.
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p>After getting through the convolution of Eabo’s post, that’s what I see as Eabo’s basic idea. If that’s indeed what he meant, then I’d be for such an idea.
I say, “Let them eat cake.”
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p>No one at the State House will pass any serious ethics laws. It is against everything that they stand for!
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p>The federal rules create the illusion of ethics. Let’s just be up front about it, like Diane Wilkerson. What else is a bra for?
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p>I think it would be laughable if Sal called on the members to conduct themselves ethically. I can’t see Rogers doing it either with the payments on the Cape Cod vacation house thing.
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p>Let’s face it. Bulger served under the golden dome. Nothing has changed!
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The sad part is they (pols) know we have an attention span of about 2 minutes. They will carry on for awhile and hope we just forget it. THink about some of the outrages recently and where are they now? Heard anything about the Boston Firefighters taking random drug tests? What ever happened to Congressman Jefferson? Charlie Rangel’s vacation home income which he didn’t pay taxes for?
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p>WE forget and we reelect in droves… sheep that we are.
It looks like the intents behind the rules are as that
official state funded websites shouldn’t be used to disseminate campaign material, even going so far as to make sure that the official state site shouldn’t even have a link to a campaign site.
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p>It further asserts that campaign sites shouldn’t link to the official state site. Not sure why this would be a problem ethically. It seems to me that if the official state site is intended to be an efficient gateway for information on government, linking to it shouldn’t be a problem. What is the ethical problem with “For further information about [Member’s] service, see [his or her] official state site here [link]”. Shouldn’t it be the official government position that since it is desirable to make official member information accessible and available through the web and that for people wishing to find just such information, finding it on the official state site is a good thing regardless of how directed there?
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p>Now Ebo has either read into these guidelines (or has omitted the citation for it) a claim that the campaign website shouldn’t have information about his official activities. It’s as if he’s saying that it’s only ethical for information about a member’s activities to come out through official sources (free speech be damned). Sounds pretty ridiculous to say that a person can’t even talk about his own job on his own website. The rule cited is only about linking, not the actual information. One of the reasons I think the ‘don’t-link’ rule is stupid is that it forces the member to duplicate effort.
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p>Anyway… as ethical concerns go, this is pretty lame.
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p>If something this trivial really looks that bad to Ebo, I’m sure he absolutely blew his stack when he heard about the GOP bypassing the government’s email system.
the challengers from being able to talk about their opponents record with their campaign funds?
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p>Also add any media or private individuals from discussing an elected officials record because that would an unpaid campaign contribution.
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p>You can’t really take this seriously, unless you’re a Republican and they have a lack of encumbent candidates.
… that those who worry about such things might not care about your hypothetical, because what they are seeing (wrongly in my opinion) is a conflict of interest on the part of the official in the way he disseminates information (the way they might want to vs the way they think he or she should). Information of a third party wouldn’t be a conflict.
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p>I think this is the underlying thinking (however bad it is) and that’s the conclusion I reach when applying the principal behind the thinking toward the hypothetical.
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p>Of course, this is an entirely too serious treatment of the absurd idea.
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p>Any particular reason behind musing issues in a months old comment? (not that I mind, I just might have missed it.)
for the madness.
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p>if government paid for the services these offices often provide out of pocket, it would be a serious ethical dilemma, because it would essentially be free PR and campaigning, with Massachusetts footing the bill.
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p>Furthermore, these services are very expensive. If we were to allow every state rep to have a district office, a fairly liberal mailing budget and other perks on the state’s dime, it would be at least another $50 a year per legislator (cheap rent, a second aide, not even including funds for mail). I’m probably being very conservative with that number.
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p>Given that there are state reps who have been elected to office for upwards of a decade – and still only have one singular state aide (a position that hasn’t seen pay raise in 7-8 years) – it would take a shocking change in state policy in a bad fiscal time to make this happen. If DiMasi or any other Democrat were proposing anything akin to this, I bet you’d be throwing a conniption fit talking about government waste and ethical questions. It would probably be good policy (goodness knows they could use some help, especially in reaching out to constituents, but also in research), but who’s going to lead that effort?
and yes I’m being conservative.
… would be for a campaign slight to link to the official state site.
Though, that wasn’t really what I was talking about. The problem could come up in the kind of dialogue that’s written on the site. Go look at the official websites for us congresspeople versus their campaign websites… they are very different and serve very different functions. Campaign websites should be and feel different than state websites because otherwise people may feel like they need to be supporters of that person in contacting the office to get the services of that office that they need. There’s other reasons I could think up, but that’s the big one.
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p>The real question here should be why we haven’t made this state update the old state legislative sites. They’re awful and haven’t changed in any significant way since probably the late 90s. It would not cost overwhelming amounts of money (or it shouldn’t, anyway), to create a new platform for websites that would improve constituent services and a politician’s ability to speak to their constituents. Examples being they could post the bills that they sponsor or are supporting, they could create numerous new ways to contact the office and legislators could be more transparent with them. There could even be quick-services they could add for constituents as they do at the national level, like signing up for tours of the state house, etc. I have to think that all of these neat features could be added to the state for a few hundred thousand dollars a year if current aides were to be expected to update the personal sites themselves.
I still don’t see the problem. Of course different sites would serve different functions. As far as I can see that’s no reason to prohibit linking.
how an even perceived partisan bent to a state website could undermine that office’s ability to work with constituents? Do I think it’s a big problem? No. If it were, there’d be even more restrictions than there already is. But that’s why they do it… and I think do it with good reason. Keep campaign and state rep/senate sites different… and focus on the real reform, which should be vastly improving our state sites, making them on par with the federal sites so constituents can finally have a strong and easy tool to use in contacting their state reps beyond even a visit or a phone – which would be far more time consuming for these busy offices.
… on the state website to the campaign. I’m talking about the other way around,… links on the campaign site to the state site. I get the problem you’re talking about, I don’t see a problem the other way around though. Why shouldn’t a campaign site link to an official state site. Why shouldn’t any advocacy site link to the official state sites relevant to the subject of advocacy?