Eagle River man pleads guilty to tax crimes, firearms charges

Frontiersman editorial board

The fax came in last week under the heading, Alaska State Legislature Senate Majority News, and with the instructions, "For immediate release, April 23, 2004, Contact: Sen. Scott Ogan …" It was a press release with the recommended headline, "Legislative Ethics Committee upholds Sen. Ogan's actions."

The lede read, "The Alaska Select Committee on Legislative Ethics unanimously adopted an advisory opinion today that the legislative ethics code does not prohibit a legislator with a conflict from taking action in committee."

Ogan was later quoted as saying, "I am gratified that the Legislative Ethics Committee looked into the issue and made a finding that confirms my conduct was ethical."

Once again, Ogan has managed to look at a banana and see an orange. The decision by the committee does not declare that Ogan's conduct was ethical, it simply points out that Alaska's legislative ethics code doesn't prohibit unethical behavior. That may come as a relief to Ogan, but it should send shivers down the spines of every voter in the state, no matter which party you support.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that we like to believe we have a "citizen legislature," which we largely do not. Take a look at your own Valley legislators -- most of them list their elected position at their primary source of income. For all intents and purposes, we do not have a citizen legislature. What we have is a legislature largely comprised of people with specific, and sometimes lucrative, special interests, who are able to hide behind an embarrassingly weak ethics code. We deserve better.

When Ogan's conflict was first coming to light, Mark Sexton, president and CEO of Evergreen Resources Inc. said, "I asked [Ogan] how is it that I can hire a senator in Alaska to represent my company, but I can't hire a senator in Colorado?" The question Sexton should have asked himself is, "Even if the code allows me to create a serious conflict of interest, isn't that unethical, and shouldn't I avoid even the appearance of unethical behavior?"

Maybe Ogan and Sexton thought, since conflicts of interest are part and parcel of Alaska politics, nobody would raise an eyebrow. Instead, people are raising hell. Hopefully, we'll get a stronger legislative ethics code as a result. If not, we'll have to elect legislators who bring adequate ethics with them.