Resignation put heat on disclosure

BOISE – The messy ethics scandal that tore apart the Idaho State Senate this year shows why nearly every other state requires lawmakers to disclose their personal finances, experts say.

The scandal ended in the resignation of Sen. Jack Noble, R-Kuna, on the verge of a Senate vote on whether to eject him from office. Noble had introduced legislation that would have made his own convenience store eligible for a state liquor license, though it’s across the street from an elementary school, without disclosing his personal stake in the issue.

“This is precisely why there are financial disclosure rules,” said Robert Smith, a political scientist at Clemson University and an expert in government ethics. “They’re invaluable tools.”

Smith said disclosures put both elected officials and citizens on notice to make sure that the public’s interest, not someone’s private interest, is served.

Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, said disclosure laws can deter officials from using their offices for personal gain. “I think it provides a major disincentive,” he said.

Forty-seven states have such laws. Washington’s was rated the strongest in the nation in a September study by the Center for Public Integrity. Only Idaho, Michigan and Vermont don’t require financial disclosure.

But there’s no move on to enact personal financial disclosure laws in Idaho, or to tighten the state’s ethics rules – even in the wake of the Noble case.

“I think the current system we have on the ethics process does work,” said House Speaker Bruce Newcomb. “Congress has that full disclosure, and they have people that have done much worse than anything I’ve seen in the Idaho Legislature.”

Nevertheless, the Noble case shook up Idaho lawmakers this year and prompted a near-epidemic of disclosures of possible conflicts of interest in the chambers of the House and Senate. Idaho law requires lawmakers who would benefit financially from legislation to disclose that fact before voting, but still allows them to vote.

Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, said she made so many disclosures this year that “there were senators that just kind of rolled their eyes, going, ‘Oh, she’s going to stand and disclose something again.’ “

But, she said, “It’s just the kind of person I am. If I think anybody’s going to think ill of me and think that I’m not doing the right thing, then I will disclose.”

Lodge disclosed a conflict of interest on legislation to deregulate land-line telephone service in Idaho because her son, Ed, works for Qwest Corp., which proposed the bill, and he played a major role in lobbying the Legislature for the measure.

“It was obvious,” she said.

But Sen. Curt McKenzie, R-Nampa, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, didn’t disclose that until just before the start of this year’s session, he represented Qwest as an attorney on rate issues before the Idaho Public Utilities Commission. He said he switched law firms, from Stoel Rives to a smaller litigation firm, in December and no longer represented the telephone company.

“There wasn’t a conflict,” McKenzie said.

McKenzie also supported Qwest’s deregulation legislation last year and voted for it in the Senate without declaring a conflict, even though at the time, he still was representing Qwest. His name appears on pleadings filed with the PUC in various cases involving the company as late as Jan. 21, 2005, though McKenzie said those documents were in error, and he did no Qwest work in January.

“(Even) while I was working at Stoel Rives, there would be no benefit to me or the law firm,” McKenzie said. “In fact, Qwest spends a lot of money on those regulatory rate cases that the law firm would lose if the bill had passed last year.”

So if anything, McKenzie said, the bill would have had a negative financial impact on his employer. “It wouldn’t have affected me either way,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a thing that falls under the rules that have to be disclosed.”

Bullock said state financial disclosure laws vary in their effectiveness, but they all have some impact. “It would be appropriate to have some kind of requirement of filing information on what the legislator and the legislator’s family and spouse financial holdings and activities are,” he said. “That would be appropriate, and most states have it.”

Rep. Jim Clark, R-Hayden, said he’s inclined to agree. “I would disclose my holdings,” he said. “I just never pursued it because I didn’t think it was a big issue with us – maybe it is a big issue now, because of the Noble case.”

Every year in his six terms in the Legislature, Clark has disclosed a possible conflict on the budget bill for the University of Idaho agricultural extension, because his wife is the District 1 director for the program. Often, including this year, he’s asked to be excused from voting on the bill.

“It’s the perception,” Clark said. “If she’s going to gain out of it, then I’m going to gain out of it, and all I wanted to do is tell people about it.”

Idaho’s Ethics in Government law passed in 1990, directing legislators to declare if they have a conflict of interest before voting. In September, the Center for Public Integrity reported that Idaho House members had declared conflicts on 56 votes in the 14 years since the law took effect – an average of four a year – and Idaho senators had declared conflicts 36 times, an average of less than three a year.

This year, after the Noble case, declarations of possible conflicts became a near-everyday occurrence, particularly in the Senate. The week of March 21, the week the Qwest bill passed, six senators disclosed conflicts on seven bills.

Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, said he declared a conflict on the contractor registration bill because it required contractors to purchase insurance, and he’s an insurance agent. “There probably was not a conflict there,” Goedde said. “I made that disclosure I guess to err on the side of caution.”

Goedde, who served on the Senate Ethics Committee that investigated Noble, said he didn’t think financial disclosure requirements would have headed off the Noble case. “I guess I just don’t see where writing it down on a piece of paper would’ve made a bit of difference in that case,” he said. “I think in the public’s mind politicians as a body are crooks.” But, he said, “I would say the system we have in place worked.”

Some worry that if Idaho were to require personal financial disclosure, it could keep some prospective candidates from running for the Legislature. “I would be interested to see what the other states require and how it’s affected people’s desire to serve, how much of a headache it is to do it,” McKenzie said.

But Bullock, the University of Georgia expert, said, “When one campaigns for public office, that’s something you don’t have to do – it’s a choice you make. It’s appropriate that you be subject to some kind of higher standards than if you were just a private citizen.”

He added, “If it really is too onerous, they don’t have to run for office.”