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Let’s give lawmakers a hand—and a hand up
Terrell Dougan | February 19, 2010 (Salt Lake Tribune)Don’t get me wrong. I love living here. My people came here on foot and knew the value of hard work. They still do. These are the people I want to be living around: organized, resourceful, independent. In a flood or an earthquake, Utahns know just what to do. I am so proud of our state!
I also love the way our state constitution insists on a balanced budget. The joke is going around right now that California is so heavily in debt it’s asking to be annexed to Nevada. Not so Utah.
I am grateful to our legislators who work tirelessly to keep us out of debt as a state. I applaud conservative thought, which suggests giving people a hand up, not a handout. It preserves the dignity of every individual.
However. Now the time has come to give our hardworking legislators a hand up to high moral and ethical ground. Three major problems: 1) There is no limit on the amount of campaign funds they can receive. 2) They can hand out their extra campaign funds to other legislators in order to buy influence with them. And get this: 3) Not only is your legislator essentially for sale to the highest bidder, it is legal for your legislator also to be a paid lobbyist at the very same time he/she is a legislator.
Does this sound right to you? Surely the terms “conflict of interest” must still have meaning in the way we govern ourselves. And yet this concept is ignored on Capitol Hill more and more every year. This means that little voices, voices of those who cannot afford paid lobbyists and huge contributions, often have no voice at all. Call me crazy, but I think it’s time we citizens gave these gentlemen and ladies a hand up toward ethical behavior.
Oh, they’ve made a weak little gesture about doing their own ethics reform and policing themselves, but my question is: How can you police yourself? They want us to believe they’ve got it handled. But the reforms they suggest totally avoid the three issues listed above. This is beneath their dignity as individuals and as advocates for all citizens of this state.
Someone very clever up there thought of a really ingenious way to keep us citizens out of the picture: They will propose a change in our fine state constitution to include their insubstantial ethics reform system forever, so that no citizens can ever question it again.
Bothersome sort, we citizens are. We shouldn’t be involved, they may be thinking. What else could be behind this latest move?
If you want to help them change in a meaningful way, with an independent commission to correct these abuses, go to utahethicsreform.org, get a petition, help collect the signatures needed to address and correct all three issues on November’s ballot.
Help these people up onto the high ground. In their true hearts they must really know how bad conflict of interest is when making public policy. If your legislator tells you he or she is against this, perhaps it is time to get yourself a new legislator.
Terrell Dougan , a writer and community volunteer, spent many years advocating for those with developmental disabilities and served for a time as community relations assistant to former Gov. Scott Matheson.