MIA ethics bills suddenly more relevant

While the municipal election campaigns have revved up to full speed in advance of Oct. 3 balloting, statewide campaigns, such as those for the Legislature, are on deck. The general election is set for Nov. 7, leaving a month of undistracted front-and-center campaigning for those seeking votes for a ticket to Juneau in January.

Recent FBI raids on legislative offices have cast the entire proceedings in a different light. Both in tone and strategy, campaigns are being framed differently. In an unusual turn of events, it is incumbents who find themselves in a position of electoral discomfort, if not full-blown weakness.

The FBI investigation, and its focus on the oil field services company VECO and the cash-related relationships it has with legislators, has brought issues of ethics back to the forefront. It also has shed a revealing light on majority lawmakers, who in the two years since two high-profile administrative ethics lapses, have done nothing of substance to address ethics reform.

The best the majority could muster was an ill-advised and widely reviled bill that would have imposed hefty fines and jail time on someone who talked about filing an ethics complaint. The bill cleared the state Senate before, mercifully, dying in the House. Before it did, though, it enjoyed the support of both Valley senators, including Charlie Huggins, a Murkowski-appointed lawmaker who is now trying to convince voters his record is worthy of another term.

While majority lawmakers split hairs over the size of the fine or the appropriateness of including jail time in the bill, two perfectly good, common-sense bills languished. In a classic case of partisanship trumping sound public policy, the bills, which directly addressed festering problems, barely saw the light of day because they were proposed by the minority.

The first - House Bill 194 - would have slammed shut the &#8220Renkes loophole,” which allowed the former attorney general to avoid letter-of-the-law conflicts of interest in his dealings with a company whose stock he owned. The bill would have set clear financial limits on such stock holdings and more clearly spelled out the difference between &#8220official” state business and personal business.

To his credit, Valley Rep. Carl Gatto joined a bipartisan effort in approving the bill when it went through the State Affairs Committee. Additionally, Gatto also was instrumental in making the majority's executive ethics bill more public friendly when that one passed through State Affairs.

Given the ongoing FBI investigation, the other proposal that had no traction in Juneau - Senate Bill 285 - may have even more current relevance. It requires full disclosure of work done by legislators for &#8220consulting fees.” Introduced in the Senate, where controversial Senate President Ben Stevens has collected a quarter-million dollars in such mysterious fees from VECO while refusing to say what, exactly, he has done for them, the bill never made it out of committee.

Most legislative incumbents, including all the local ones, have VECO contributions on their records. The company has never been bashful about throwing money around, so it is easy for lawmakers to distance themselves from the contributions.

What lawmakers cannot hide from, though, are their records of supporting - or not - meaningful ethics reform.

In the coming weeks, candidates for the Legislature will be making the rounds. We encourage Valley voters to ask them two questions: Why, with the need for ethics reform undisputed and perfectly good solutions on the table, has nothing been done? And, what, specifically, will you do to address this in the next session?

Then, listen to their answers carefully. Talk is cheap, especially in an election year.