I’ve had a chance to look over the ethics bill (text, summary, and history here) released last night from the conference committee, and it is excellent. It has all the provisions mentioned in the summary, and more, with no significant devil in these details that I can see, although other attorneys are still pouring over it.
There are only a very few things that didn’t make the list (like a ban on lobbyists contributions, and a reduction of political party contributions to $500 which Republicans opposed), but in the core area–ethics reform–virtually everything was in there, and none of the bad stuff remains. The Ethics Commission will get a bunch of enhanced enforcement tools and a little more regulatory authority, although not the full regulatory we favor. The AG gets a statewide grand jury process, new fraud statutes to enforce. The public gets a gift ban with both civil and criminal penalties that apply to both the giver and recipient and a lot more transparency in campaign funding and lobbying. I don’t need to rehash the summary-but the list of reforms is long.
Common Cause is endorsing the bill and asking members to vote for it.
Kudos are in order to House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray, the conferees, and the many members who pushed for reform. We don’t know how the sausage was made (a worthy topic for another day) but it is tasty.
for weighing threw it Lets hope the vote goes as expected this afternoon and the Governor agrees with your assessment.
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p>I just hope that Ethics reform does not stop here. We still need to deal with ethics at the local levels if we hope to restore people confidence in Government as a whole. There is nothing worse then to see a spouse or parent voting as an elected official for a family members raise or a local contractor voting for a zoning change to enhance a project. Ethics reform should not stop at Beacon Hill if we want to win back the people on Main Street to the ideal that government is about all of us not just some of us.
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p>As Usual Just my Opinion
Rep. Jennifer Callahan is giving a barn-burner of a speech on the House floor. The crux of her argument is that they shouldn’t be patting themselves on the back for an ethics reform bill that doesn’t apply the Open Meeting Law to the Legislature, among other greivances.
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p>Well worth viewing a copy of it.
Applying the Open Meetings Law to the Legislature is an excellent item to put at the top of the progressive agenda.
Because almost everything on Beacon Hill is done in secret, with no duty to disclose anything – no open meeting law, no FOIA…it is much easier for any problem or lapse to fester and be really huge – I was shocked back when I confirmed that the legislature had excluded itself from ALL Open Meetings laws and ALL Freedom of Information Acts laws decades ago.
I’d vote for it.
…and worthwhile – but still – bring back cable coverage, and lets continue to advocate for Open Meetings laws and FOIA to apply up there on the hill. Nothing like light and air.