Ethics laws? According to knowledgeable sources, Maine legislators don’t need no stinkin’ ethics laws. Those sources should know, because they’re all former Maine legislators.
“I think the more emphasis you put on [ethics] … the more aspersions you’re going to cast on yourselves,” said then-state Rep. Paul Jacques, a Waterville Democrat, in a 1990 Associated Press story.
“There’s a vague feeling that something might be wrong with the ethics of Maine legislators … but no real concrete evidence of a widespread problem begging for a legislative solution,” wrote then-state Senate President Beth Edmonds, a Democrat from Freeport, in a 2008 op-ed piece.
In 2009, then-state Senate President Libby Mitchell told Capitol News Service, “I think we are pretty open. We are a small state and everybody knows everybody, and people in a district know the people they elect and what they do for a living.”
For more than a quarter century, these attitudes prevailed in Augusta, thwarting attempts to institute reasonable limits on politicians’ activities and sufficient disclosure of their finances. Majority Democrats reacted as if they’d been personally insulted whenever someone proposed they disclose gifts they received from lobbyists, that they didn’t use their elected offices to directly benefit themselves or their employers, or that they reveal their close family members’ sources of income.
As former Democratic state Sen. Joe Brannigan of Portland told the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting in 2012, after it revealed that the nonprofit organization he headed had received $98 million in state money during a period when Brannigan served as co-chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, “Would you know any more if you wrote it down on a piece of paper that nobody looks at?”
For decades, the Center for Public Integrity has been ranking states on the strength of their ethical standards, and Maine has consistently received failing grades. After each report card, there were attempts to close the glaring loopholes in the state’s laws. Without exception, these efforts were overwhelmingly defeated or watered down to the point where they had no impact.
In 2006, for instance, after state Sen. Tom Saviello, then an independent from Wilton, attempted to use his position on the Natural Resources Committee to pressure the Department of Environmental Protection into dropping an investigation of the paper mill where he worked, a special advisory committee was formed to study Maine’s ethics laws. The group proposed a comprehensive package of corrections that included allowing ordinary citizens to file complaints against legislators and broadening the legal definition of conflict of interest.
Many of these recommendations ended up in bills sponsored by Senate President Edmonds and Speaker of the House Glenn Cummings of Portland. They suffered crushing defeats, engineered behind the scenes by soon-to-be Senate president Mitchell. Instead, the Legislature approved a study of ethics, even though that’s what the advisory committee had just completed. In a later session, a few small changes from the Edmonds and Cummings bills were approved in much-weakened form.
In 2009, Democratic state Rep. Andrea Boland of Sanford, whose day job was selling vitamin supplements, sponsored a bill that would have required health insurance policies to cover the cost of such products. Another Boland measure would have mandated the state include nutritional supplements in its health-system planning. “I don’t call it a conflict of interest,” Boland told the Kennebec Journal. “I call it a convergence of interest.”
She was right. Under state law, that didn’t qualify as a conflict. Legislation attempting to make it one went exactly nowhere.
The latest report card from the Center for Public Integrity came out last year, and it was the most comprehensive to date. As usual, Maine flunked in nearly every category. Once again, a bill was crafted to cover some of these deficiencies. This year’s version called for disclosure of legislators’ ownership of 5 percent or more of a business, disclosure of any role in a political action committee, more detailed reporting of income, and electronic filing of this information on a publicly accessible website. Another measure required a waiting period before ex-legislators could become lobbyists. Just the sort of stuff that’s always gone no place fast.
But Libby Mitchell isn’t around anymore. Neither are Paul Jacques and Joe Brannigan. And Andrea Boland’s political clout has faded so much you have to wonder if those supplements are placebos.
The bills passed. Republican Gov. Paul LePage (who doesn’t think we need a law disclosing contributions to gubernatorial transition committees) signed them.
There’s actually a chance that when the center releases its next report card, Maine won’t receive another “F.”
Even a “D-“ would look pretty good.
If you come across unethical activities, email me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Your best best work to date Al. Do I sense a just a little conservative somewhere in there?
This opened my eyes, Al.
Solid nuggets of fact, all in a row.
Al knows that ethics legislation and disclosure rules will not make politics ethical. But it will be useful for the voters to have an understanding of the kind of people who govern their lives.
Yep, exactly what you’d expect when you set the fox to guard the hen-house. Given basic human nature and the amounts of money involved, are we really surprised that a self-governing body just MIGHT resist any attempt to curb their excesses?
Of course, I also don’t believe just passing the laws will do any good unless they are fairly, vigorously, and evenhandedly enforced.
Otherwise you end up with our National Govt. ethics situation. Laws passed and on the books, but regularly ignored/unenforced, and when they are, it’s usually an attempt at political point scoring/leverage. Few of the scofflaws are ever fully prosecuted, or even scolded…unless it suits a political goal for the party in the driver’s seat. That’s when the lawmakers don’t exempt themselves from the law of course.
Is it any wonder that politicians are considered less trustworthy than used car salesmen?
Oh, and just so people know, I don’t consider this a problem of a specific party, it seems to cross all ideological boundaries quite nicely.