The public doesn?t think much of legislators, political scientist Alan Rosenthal told a group of new Maryland lawmakers Tuesday, and a majority of people even think most of them take bribes.
“Nobody would think of bribing that many legislators,” said Rosenthal, a Rutgers University expert who?s been studying the General Assembly and other U.S. legislatures for years. “You don?t need to,” he joked.
The good news is the General Assembly has its own ethics adviser, named William Somerville, who meets with delegates and senators individually to guide them through the quagmire of rules that is supposed to guide their conduct.
“Some people have unrealistic expectations of ethics,” Somerville said, but “it?s important to live up to the highest standards.” He advised the freshman to trust their instincts, and said that if a situation doesn?t feel right, it probably isn?t.
The subject of gifts is what Somerville called a “fairly complicated provision of the law,” but it generally [forbids] taking anything worth more than $20 from suspect classes of givers, such as lobbyists and the people they work for. The Joint Ethics Committee also banned accepting high priced hotels that have been offered to legislators to entice them to stay with them during the 90-day session, paid for out of their state per diems.
Legislators also are not supposed to use any state resources ? computers, phones and offices ? for campaigning and fundraising. But they are allowed to lend their names and official capacity to raise money for charity, even though some legislators would prefer “the answer to be, ?No, you can?t,? ” Somerville said.
The biggest problems come from the conflicts of interest generated by the outside employment. “In a part-time legislature, you?re always going to have conflicts,” Somerville said, but rather than banning participation, generally lawmakers can disclose their potential conflict. “Then you go ahead and participate fully,” he said.
“We?d lose the value of a part-time legislature” if people such as farmers, bankers and insurance brokers couldn?t work on their fields of expertise, Somerville said.
Shawn Tarrant, a new delegate from Baltimore City, said he sat down with Somerville shortly after the election to determine how his job as Medicaid director for Bristol-Myers-Squibb, the pharmaceutical firm, would affect the issues he could work on. He was reassured that he could work on issues that reflected his knowledge.
Suzanne Fox, head of the state ethics commission, provided the freshmen with a detailed overview of the long, detailed and complicated disclosure forms they and many state employees are required to fill out. The form asks for all sources of income, including those from spouses and children, and all holdings of stocks, bonds and real estate.
After the forms are filed, any member of the public may ask to see the form and copy it, and then publicize whatever they find in them.
Sen.-elect Michael Lennett, D-Montgomery, an attorney who specializes in consumer privacy issues, was taken aback by the amount of private financial information that could be disclosed to the public. He called it intrusive and wondered if any legislator had challenged the law.
