This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Rick Henderson, managing editor of Carolina Journal.
RALEIGH — With the corruption trial of Gov. Mike Easley’s former right-hand man Ruffin Poole set for April 26, and the first court appearance of state Sen. R.C. Soles Jr. — charged with assault after shooting a former legal client — slated for later this month, it’s no surprise that ethics in government has a newfound prominence in political discussions.
Everybody cheers clean politics and pooh-poohs graft. Is anyone really against honesty and in favor of corruption — unless you’re on the take? (And then, would you admit it publicly?)
That said, when this year’s short session of the General Assembly isn’t scrambling to balance the state budget, it will spend much of its time dreaming up new legislation compelling politicians and other public officials to maintain pure hearts and spotless records.
Charlotte Observer columnist Jack Betts hinted as much this week, citing “three House bills pending in the Senate. One requires appointees of boards and commissions to report campaign contributions they give to officials who appoint them, plus any fundraising activities they engage in. Another would ban contributions from state contractors to officials who can approve their contract. A third would require a six-month cooling-off period before executive branch officials can become lobbyists or before state workers can go to work for industries they regulate.”
Setting aside the merits of these proposals, there are two major problems with any deadline-driven, high-profile crusade for clean politics: Corruption is already illegal and is being prosecuted. (Perhaps not as aggressively as it should be, though Poole, Soles, and even Easley might beg to differ.) And sweeping moves to impose virtue on the political class could cause collateral damage to our basic freedoms.
Former House Speaker Jim Black, former U.S. Rep. Frank Ballance, former state Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps, former state Rep. Thomas Wright, former lottery board member Kevin Geddings, and ethanol conspirators Boyce Hudson, David Lee Brady, and James Albert Perry Jr. are in (or on their way to) prison. They were convicted of (or pleaded guilty to) violating anti-corruption laws that are now on the books.
To be sure, federal prosecutors took the lead in the prosecutions of everyone but Wright and now Soles. North Carolinians may have a legitimate beef with Attorney General Roy Cooper’s diligence in pursuing the big fish in state corruption probes.
But existing laws provide ample opportunity to make crooked officials pay for their abuse of the public trust.
Moreover, any heavy-handed attempt to inoculate the public from corruption is likely to have serious, unintended side effects, harming innocents in the process.
Consider two recent examples from Colorado, where I lived for the past few years and where corruption isn’t a serious problem.
In 2006, voters passed Amendment 41, an ethics-in-government measure imposing the nation’s most sweeping ban ($50 a year) on gifts to politicians, public officials, government workers, and their spouses and relatives — not to mention independent contractors that do business with the state.
The amendment was so broadly written that Attorney General John Suthers concluded that the gift ban would bar researchers at the University of Colorado from collecting Nobel Prize money and the children of public employees from accepting scholarships.
A local judge, taking the amendment at face value, ruled that it barred lobbyists from socializing with anyone involved with state government, including elected officials and public employees. It barred police officers from taking up a collection to help pay for the funeral of a colleague’s child. Read literally, Amendment 41 violates Coloradans’ First Amendment right to free association.
The state Supreme Court got weak-kneed and reversed the decision. Now it’s waiting for a state Ethics Commission (created by the amendment) to enforce the ban and an aggrieved resident to file suit. The court has been waiting since February 2008.
Meantime, Centennial State voters passed Amendment 54 in 2008. This measure bars any individual or group holding a “sole source” government contract from donating to any state or local political campaign. Its vast definition includes public employees covered by collective bargaining agreements and hospitals accepting Medicare and Medicaid patients.
The amendment covers relatives of contractors, too, including their spouses, children, siblings, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and in-laws. Any elected official who “knowingly” accepts a campaign contribution from a sole-source contractor or relative violates the law as well. Not surprisingly, Amendment 54 is also tied up in court.
To my knowledge, no Tar Heel State lawmaker expects North Carolina to go on the sort of mindless good-government binge Colorado has embraced. But members of the General Assembly almost certainly will promote some goofy ideas this spring. Watch them closely.