Idaho lawmakers to get mandatory ethics training
BOISE – Idaho lawmakers will undergo four hours of ethics training Wednesday, in a mandatory session for all 105 senators and representatives.
It’s the second straight year the mandatory ethics training has been offered to state lawmakers. Asked why, House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, said, “Because it’s so important.”
“Not all ethical issues are intuitive,” said Senate President Pro-Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg. “There are statutes that govern that we need to be aware of – for instance, who’s a member of your family, who’s a member of your household. Those are all defined by statute,” he said. “So No. 1, we need to explain what the laws and rules are, what are the statutes, what governs corruption, what governs campaign disclosure. We need to make sure everybody’s acquainted with the law, so that there isn’t a breach of conduct in that regard.”
But beyond that, he said, “Ethics is more than statute – it’s governed by character.” The training session, he said, will “help remind people that we have a high level of responsibility to the public because we have gone out and asked for their trust, and they have given us their trust. So we are held to a very high standard of conduct. We want to remind people of that.”
The training comes as Idaho is poised to consider filling a major gap in its disclosure laws – it is currently one of just three states with no personal financial disclosure requirements for legislators or any elected or appointed state official. The only other states lacking such laws are Michigan and Vermont.
Hill noted that a financial disclosure bill passed the Senate unanimously in 2009. However, then-House Speaker Lawerence Denney declined to assign it to a House committee, so it died.
“There was strong bipartisan support for that in the Senate,” Hill said.
Bedke has made no commitments, but has talked with other lawmakers about the concept.
On Tuesday, House and Senate Democrats held a news conference to give their response to GOP Gov. Butch Otter’s State of the State message a day earlier, and used the opportunity to endorse three new ethics laws this session: The financial disclosure bill; a “revolving door” law to restrict former lawmakers from immediately returning to the Statehouse as lobbyists without a waiting period; and an effort to ban lobbying of the executive branch by prospective contractors during the time that requirements for big new contracts are being developed. “That needs to be more carefully monitored and managed,” said House Minority Leader John Rusche, D-Lewiston.
He said he’s talked with both Bedke and House State Affairs Chairman Tom Loertscher about financial disclosure legislation this year. “He is working on financial disclosure legislation that we support,” Rusche said. “I believe it’s modeled after the state of Utah.”
Both the House and Senate have had to convene ethics committees in recent years to look into complaints against lawmakers. Last year, a House ethics committee was convened after Rep. Shannon McMillan, R-Silverton, acknowledged to the House that she cast one of just two votes against a bill that could benefit her personally without disclosing her conflict of interest; the bill would have removed a special exemption dating back to 1939 that protects elected officials and legislators from having their wages garnished due to state court judgments. She didn’t disclose that she faced numerous court judgments, including at least one in which garnishing of her legislative wages was blocked because of the special exemption. House ethics rules require such disclosures.
The panel decided not to impose formal sanctions against McMillan because she admitted the lapse.
In 2012, a Senate ethics panel was convened over a complaint against then-Senate Resources Chairman Monty Pearce, R-New Plymouth, for failing to disclose, through 22 votes, that he had a conflict of interest over oil and gas legislation. He disclosed the conflict before the final vote; he had oil and gas leases on his land. The Senate committee declined to sanction Pearce.
Bedke said most ethics issues that have arisen in the Legislature haven’t been “malicious,” but came when lawmakers didn’t fully grasp the requirements of legislative ethics rules. “I do not want to not have done my part in that education process,” he said.
The ethics training will include presentations from legislative leaders from both parties, from the Idaho Attorney General’s office, and from Jeffrey Smith, an ethics expert, professor and author, whose presentation is entitled “Don’t Even Go Near the Line.”
Hill said in addition to the financial disclosure bill, he’s interested in a revolving door law. “I have not particularly been in favor of that in the past, but I’m beginning to change my mind,” he said. “I am to the point where I think there needs to be an open and honest discussion about it. I would like us to have some hearings on it, whether that’s in the form of considering a bill, or whether it’s just gathering information.”
If nothing happens this session, he said, he’d consider it as a topic for legislative interim committee to examine.