Comprehensive reform worth any price

MARK KELSEY/Spectrum

January 26, 2007

It would seem, from the stack of ethics-related bills filed in the new Legislature, that lawmakers have gotten the message from voters that it's long past time for some house-cleaning. As always, though, actions speak louder than words, and action, so far, has not inspired confidence that meaningful change is afoot.

To her credit, Gov. Sarah Palin is doing her part. She has wasted no time, since taking office, in demonstrating her commitment to ethics reform. An &#8220ethics white paper,” released last week by her office, presented a comprehensive approach to getting state government back on solid ethical footing.

Unfortunately, it was met with veiled resistance by some majority lawmakers, who seemed to take exception to the governor daring to suggest how the legislative branch of government might clean up its act. It might be easier to take this silly reaction more seriously if the majority hadn't been so involved in recent years in watering down existing ethics laws.

Among those registering initial opposition to the governor's plan was Speaker of the House John Harris, whose thoughts on legislative matters, including ethics, appear elsewhere on this page. Although he appears to have softened his stance about the governor's involvement in ethics legislation, his suggestions for change have little to do with the specifics of safeguarding the public interest with meaningful ethics laws.

In his Spectrum piece above, Harris puts forth the notion that ethics reform, fundamentally, is about lawmaker compensation. Perhaps it is time, he suggests, to do away with the &#8220citizen legislator” and increase lawmakers' pay as an essential first step in making them more ethical.

Irrespective of the absurdity of a five-term representative like Harris talking about &#8220citizen legislators,” this is not the biggest myth incumbents are fond of perpetuating. That honor belongs to the alleged $24,000 per year lawmakers love to toss around as their annual pauper's wage.

The full story is that the 24K is just base pay. There's also per diem stipends to offset living expenses and reimbursements for travel and relocation. Totaled, these put most lawmakers closer to $50,000 per year and more. Still no great shakes, to be sure, especially for what we ask them to do. But it's hardly the slave-wage legislators love to complain about.

Harris expounded on his ideas - and did a bit of myth-massaging in the process - in his testimony Tuesday before the House State Affairs Committee, which was discussing his own ethics bill. It's so hard to be a legislator, Harris told those assembled in the committee room. There's so many complicated rules to follow and so much is expected for so little pay. &#8220I'm not whining about it,” whined Harris, who state records show had income from his legislative work of nearly $93,000 in 2005.

Harris went on to say that creating more laws needlessly complicates things. By increasing the number of restrictions on lawmakers in an effort to better ensure ethical behavior, fewer people will be eligible for elected office. That's not what the people of Alaska want, he said.

I won't presume to know what Alaskans want. But it seems much more likely to me, based on recent elections, that what the people of Alaska do desire, first and foremost, is elected representatives they can trust. If that means fewer people are eligible for a seat in the Legislature, I don't think anyone will have heartburn over it.

Harris also misses the point big time when he limits his talk of an ethical fix to explicitly illegal activity. Discussing the FBI raids last August and the ongoing investigation into possible legislative corruption, Harris is quick to share his belief that a few bad apples are casting everyone in a shadow of suspicion.

Ethics reform, clearly, should address these lapses. But it should also address the less explicit things Harris would rather pretend aren't issues. Conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency and accountability in lawmaking have been increasing concerns among the public. In recent years, they have gone unchecked and, in some cases, have been institutionalized - even under Speaker Harris's watch.

Expectations about these notions are hardly unreasonable: The public's business, for example, should never be conducted behind closed doors. Access to the policy-making process should not be easier for lobbyists, party hacks and deep-pocketed campaign contributors. The priorities of political parties should never supersede the priorities of Alaskans.

To ignore these things is to be part of the problem - just as it is to coddle and defend such abusers of the public trust as Ben Stevens, Randy Ruedrich and Gregg Renkes.

Speaker Harris and others can bob, weave and deflect all they want, but it will never change the fact that the public's creeping lack of trust in their state government began long before the FBI came on the scene. So any fix needs to comprehensive. And, yes, Speaker Harris, it may even need to be complicated.

But it seems like a pretty small price to pay for decent, trustworthy government.

Mark Kelsey is the Frontiersman's managing editor. Contact him at 352-2268 or mark.kelsey@frontiersman.com.