Disclosure law needed

Idaho lawmakers cherish their secrecy, even when they’re embarrassed by it.

Last session, for example, the Idaho Senate voted to allow committees to close meetings for any reason, further distancing the public business from Idahoans. In recent years, the Republican supermajority met in closed caucuses to fashion a major tax package in the Senate and to count noses before overturning voter-approved term limits in the House.

Now, top legislators are trying to put behind them the 2005 ethics scandal involving former Republican senator Jack Noble from Kuna without addressing a root cause: failure by the state to require lawmakers to disclose personal finances. House Speaker Bruce Newcomb doesn’t seem concerned that Idaho is one of only three states that don’t have the disclosure requirement. “I think the current system we have on the ethics process does work,” he told Betsy Russell of The Spokesman-Review. “Congress has full disclosure, and they have people that have done much worse than anything I’ve seen in the Idaho Legislature.”

Columnist Dan Popkey of the Idaho Statesman prompted Senate leaders to act by investigating Noble’s conflict of interest in proposing legislation that would have boosted the value of his family business and lies about it under oath. After Popkey fleshed out the ethical violations, the Senate Ethics Committee still opted to recommend that Noble be censured rather than expelled from office. Ultimately Noble resigned. Idaho lawmakers protect their own, if they can. Therefore, the state should have a strong disclosure law, like Washington’s, to reduce the chances of another ethical lapse.

Noble’s ethics scandal, according to Clemson University political scientist Robert Smith, is exactly the reason why financial disclosure is necessary. Smith, a government ethics expert, told this newspaper that disclosures are “invaluable tools” that spur politicians to serve the public interest rather than their own.

Noble might still be a state senator in good standing if Idaho had a disclosure requirement. Consider. If it was known that he owned a convenience store near an elementary, he probably would have been reluctant to try to change the way the state calculates the distance required between schools and liquor stores. At the time, Noble was trying to sell the liquor store. A liquor license would have made the property more attractive.

The issue was voted down in committee by suspicious senators.

Afterward, lawmakers who’d been scared straight by the Noble scandal routinely declared possible conflicts of interest, disclosing the underlying honesty of most Idaho citizen legislators. However, such declarations on the heels of a gut-wrenching scandal aren’t substitutes for a law that mandates disclosure.