An ethical dilemma

An ethical dilemma
3/21/09
By: Jack Nicas

The new two-year legislative session began in January. With it came a $1 billion midyear budget gap and a looming $4 billion deficit for next year.

But on the first day of the new session, Gov. Deval Patrick announced a sweeping ethics reform package in response to last session’s scandals.

(Two members of the 40-seat Senate were indicted last fall. Dianne Wilkerson allegedly accepted bribes and James Marzilli sought extra pension after allegedly groping a woman in a park.)

“The actions of a few have cast a cloud over all,” Patrick said when announcing his first bill of the session. “But we can ensure ourselves and the public that the consequences for breaching the public trust will be serious, swift, and certain.”

He called for legislative action within 30 days—the House passed its version of the bill Thursday, 49 days past Patrick’s deadline.

But the governor’s statements support what his immediate filing of the bill suggests: that ethics reform is largely a PR campaign.

In fact, ethics reform is in vogue. Seemingly every lawmaker is eager to sign on to this season’s trendiest bill.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo named it his prime concern in his inaugural address as speaker Jan. 28. Three days earlier, former speaker Salvatore DiMasi resigned from the post under the proverbial cloud Patrick mentioned.

(DiMasi’s former accountant, an unregistered lobbyist, allegedly paid for the speaker’s in-laws’ legal fees.)

Earlier this month, DeLeo reiterated the need for reform and why.

“We have to regain the public trust, and I think the way we regain that is through addressing [ethics and pensions reform],” he said at a luncheon discussion. “It’s important that we do something, and we do something as quickly as we can.” These comments came a month after Patrick’s call-to-action deadline passed.

At the first committee hearing on the bill, Committee Co-chair Sen. Brian Joyce said, “This is critically important to all of us. From the Senate president to the speaker—and every single elected official in this building—because a few of our former colleagues frankly stained us all.”

Judging from the Statehouse’s continued rhetoric, it seems legislators are employing the looking glass theory: I am what I think you think I am. As if the ethicality of the Statehouse is only determined through the eyes of the public. (Never mind the Legislature’s actual conduct.)

Maybe that’s why the charade has continued on for so long; lawmakers have had plenty of time to discuss the importance of ethics reform without taking action. The bill now sits in the Senate nearly three months after its filing. (Patrick wanted it a law by day 30.)

But as a bipartisan issue, is such a delay necessary? Not one lawmaker has publicly dissented.

House Minority Leader Bradley Jones believes the bill has been ripe for picking. “We should wipe out some of the low-hanging fruit, like ethics reform, and build some good will with the public,” he said last month.

And Rep. James Fagan, former chair of a temporary committee created to take swift action on the bill, agreed the fruit hung so low, the Legislature could already reach it.

The legislation contains “a large number of common sense, very doable ideas,” he said. His committee was later dissolved without taking action.

But despite the bill’s championed logic, legislators have been overly skeptical when actually handling it.

At the bill’s first hearing, Rep. Steven Walsh worried more lobbyist-registering mandates would have a “chilling effect” on members of state boards. Sen. Anthony Galluccio feared potential legal fees from more ethics investigations would discourage runs for office.

This undue caution usually emerges on bills that affect the Legislature and not the public.

Notwithstanding some lawmakers’ hypothetical situations, state officials’ testimony revealed the genuine need for reform.

Secretary of State William Galvin called his tools to enforce lobbyist registering “crude.”

“We basically proceed right now by the honors system,” he said.

And in investigations outside of Suffolk County, the attorney general must share the county district attorney’s grand jury system.

Those bodies sit for only three months, while “a statewide grand jury can sit for a period of up to 18 months, which is much more in line with how long corruption investigations typically take,” said Patrick’s chief legal counsel Ben Clements.

Patrick’s bill establishes a statewide grand jury system.

It also authorizes the attorney general to record phone calls with one-party consent and judicial approval. The House version of the bill has since removed this provision.

“[Patrick’s bill] is simply the common-sense mechanism to enhance the efficiency of investigations,” Clements said.

But the bill must first travel through the Legislature; and unfortunately common sense and enhanced efficiency are not part of its repertoire.