Legislators climbing aboard Egoff's Ethics Commission Act

Representative Brian Egoff's  bill, HB109, link, passed the House 64-1 by those voting, link, and is on its way to the Senate.  Despite the fact that it stinks.

How many pages of legislation would you think it should take to create an honest and above the board process enforcing ethics laws on politicians and public servants?

Egoff, link,  has whittled it down for us,
to a mere 107 pages.

About 24 pages in, Egoff veers off into election law.  Why election law and ethics commission law aren't separate law escapes me.  It has the appearance of "log rolling"; combining two or more bills into one.

How does a simple endeavor grow to from a few pages to too many pages?
A better question to ask is, why does it?

My impression; normally more words are added to make things harder to understand and more difficult to implement, not easier.

Lessening honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, is both the motivation and the proximate result of legislation like HB109. 

Imagine a legislator really doesn't want effective ethical oversight but wants to stay in office.  What is s/he to do?  There are two choices;

1. vote against a practical and effective ethics commission, and pay the political consequences, or
2. support ethics commission legislation that sounds good but won't work, and reap the political benefits.

On page 23, line 18, Egoff lays out restrictions and penalties far violating the unnecessary secrecy he has built into the process.  He provides far more privacy/secrecy for politicians and public servants accused of breaking the law, than is provided to citizens when the government files a complaint against them for allegedly breaking the law.

Wherever the line is drawn on transparency, the line should be drawn in the same place for citizens and for politicians and public servants.  Whatever is the process for the people, should be the process for politicians and public servants.

Egoff, and all of the legislators who vote in support of HB109,
will take credit for trying to create an Ethics Commission, and
get us no closer in the end, to real accountability for pols and
public servants who betray the public trust through their abuse
of the power and resources that we have entrusted to them.




photo Mark Bralley