06/16/2008
Part-time Legislature Creates Some Conflicts

As published in The Tennessean.

For the cadet at the U.S. Military Academy, the honor code states, "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do."

For the college sophomore, "ethics" may well be a course offered in the philosophy department concerned with evaluating human action.

For a professional in law or medicine, ethics may mean a code or system of moral principles or good conduct where a violation may lead to professional sanction.

For the popularly elected 132 members of the Tennessee General Assembly, an ethics test occurs every two or four years when the member's name appears on the ballot. Once a person becomes a candidate, the person becomes subject to an array of disclosure requirements for campaign and personal finances. The supporting public policy for these reporting requirements is the cleansing effect of the disclosures. Service in the General Assembly is designed to be part-time. So each member has an inherent conflict between her chosen occupation and public service. The supporting public policy is that knowledge of a potential conflict of interest before election amounts to popular acceptance of the conflict. The electorate knows that lawyers know about lost cases and that plumbers know about burst pipes.

An array of issues
Once elected, the members face a broad array of public policy issues ranging from abortion to zoning. An array of groups with an interest in those public policy issues also await them to determine how the members will craft good public policy.

Now you may see the rub. Our new lobbying registration or "ethics reform" law requires disclosures by those groups that seek to influence the formation of public policy. The new statute created the six-member Ethics Commission. The Ethics Commission itself has supplemented the new law with its own rules and advisory opinions.

The days of lobbyists wining and dining lawmakers or providing gifts have long since passed. Now only events to which all 132 members are invited are permitted, and these require written invitations and disclosure of the cost per member. Cash political contributions of more than $50 are prohibited. The new law requires annual attendance at a course led by the Ethics Commission staff for each lobbyist and the members.

In addition to registration requirements for lobbyists and their employers, employers must file semi-annual expenditure reports disclosing total payments to lobbyists and other payments to influence public policy such as public relations and advertising. Lobbyists are also subject to random audit by the Ethics Commission, and are subject to sanction by the Ethics Commission.

I suspect a succeeding generation of Tennesseans will have to judge the ethical conduct of the members of our Tennessee General Assembly. This observation does not fit neatly into any current definition of a news cycle. The next generation, however, will judge with a better perspective than we may today.