Opinions
What's my favorite irony about the state ethics commission, which the General Assembly created in 2006?
It has to be the fact that the legislature made the group responsible for making government more open, transparent and accountable is forced to do the majority of its business behind closed doors and without reporting the results.
A story from today's paper says "covered persons" should at least be getting a little bit of guidance before the end of the year.
The commission's executive director, Perry Newson, says they will make public about a dozen opinions by the end of the year, after being asked for advice over 2,000 since the group's inception.
The group, of course, has given out lots more advice than in those dozen cases. But that other advice has either come in the form of phone conversations or informal letters and e-mails -- which are none of your business, according to the state law that created the ethics commission.
Now keep in mind, neither the formal opinions or informal ones tell you whether something is ethical. They simply let you know whether you've run afoul of the state's ethics laws. I suppose there's an argument to be made that if you're doing something and you feel maybe you should run it past the ethics commission in order to keep your hind parts our of jail or from getting fined, the behavior in question might not be all that ethical anyway...but I'm told I'm grouchy on Mondays.
You may note in the story that opinions about legislative activities are sent from the commission over to the legislature's own Joint Ethics Committee, which can accept, modify or reject any of those.
Rep. Rick Glazier called this morning (we missed each other last week) and said his group has plowed through about 15 opinions sent over from the commission. While none have been rejected out of hand, several were modified he said. That probably explains the discrepancy between the dozen or so Newson said he anticipates publishing by the end of the year and the 15 that Glazier said his group has looked at.
So why am I so interested in all this? Other than the fact that government work done behind closed doors aggravates me? One of the opinions getting run through this meat grinder has to do with the legislative black caucus and questions about its foundation.
My guess is that if the caucus and the foundation are found to be in the clear, you'll see more legislators find a charitable zeal.