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It appears that the rancor of last week has faded to the background and agreement has been reached on an ethics measure.
Senate-House negotiators have emerged from a conference committee, in agreement on the framework within which an ethics reform measure can be written. [Read more...]
An ethics bill returning to the Senate is difficult to recognize after the House loaded it down with numerous provisions unrelated to ethics. Still, the Senate sponsor sees something to work with in the much changed bill.
Senate President Pro Tem Charlie Shields, a Republican from St. Joseph, isn’t ready to declare ethics reform dead this session, despite the controversy surrounding how the House forced through a loaded down bill last week.
“Not at this point,” Shields tells the Missourinet. “They’ve sent the bill over. We’ll send it to conference. Depending on what comes out of conference, we’ll decide whether that bill is alive or dead. But at this point it really wouldn’t have made a lot of difference what action took place in the House, how big or how small, that bill was probably headed to conference no matter what.”
HCS#2 SB 844 changed greatly in the House. House Democrats tried to force the issue of ethics reform with a discharge petition that strips a special ethics committee of two bills and placed them on the House calendar. Majority Floor Leader Steven Tilley of Perryville refused to bring either bill to the House floor for debate. Instead, House Republicans rushed a greatly changed SB 844 through the Special House Committee on General Laws and onto the floor on Thursday. Republicans added several provisions unrelated to ethics, highly charged partisan provisions Democrats strongly oppose. The bill passed on a party-line vote.
Shields understands the issue lawmakers have been working hard on all session has now become extremely political.
“Clearly, it is very political in the House,” says Shields, “although I don’t think that is the case in the Senate. I think we’re focused on doing a good ethics bill. It’s a bi-partisan issue in the Senate. My hope is that some of those discussions that we have in the Senate can transpire in the House and we end up with a good bill before six o’clock on Friday.”
Shields says the issue will be settled in a conference committee between the Senate and the House this final week of the legislative session. The senator says any ethics bill needs to contain language giving the Ethics Commission authority to conduct investigations as well as rid the political system of money laundering, such as making contribution transfers from one committee to another in an effort to hide who is contributing to whom. The bill doesn’t seem unredeemable in his present form to Shields.
“I’ve seen bills that have been in far worse shape than this come back out through the process,” Shields says.
Legislators have four days to come to an agreement on ethics.
An ethics bill has been filed in the House, but the road to passage in the House is far from completed.
Rep. Kevin Wilson, a Republican from Neosho, has filed the bill as chairman of the special House committee reviewing ethics legislation this session. Most members of his committee signed on to the legislation before leaving for the annual weeklong spring break. It still must receive the formal endorsement of the committee before it is sent to the full House for debate.
Wilson says one of the key provisions of the bill was the trickiest to word. That provision would ban committee-to-committee transfers of campaign donations. Both political parties have used a loop-hole in current law to skirt direct donations so that the public wouldn’t be aware of who was giving to which candidate. Wilson says the provision should end such campaign money laundering.
Other aspects of the HB 2300 would prevent legislators from serving as political consultants, force a former lawmaker to wait out at least one legislative session before becoming a lobbyist and limit the amount that can be contributed to a campaign to $5,000. Democrats, including Governor Nixon, have pushed for re-instating campaign contribution limits while Republicans have resisted the idea. House Republican leaders, though, have stated they would not stop ethics legislation if it contained campaign contribution limits.
The state legislature repealed campaign contribution limits in 2008. Prior to that, Missouri capped donations to a candidate for statewide office at $1,350, with caps of $625 for Senate candidates and $325 for House candidates. The House bill doesn’t distinguish between offices with a $5,000 limit across-the-board.
A Senate ethics bill, SB 577, passed unanimously and has been sent to the House. It doesn’t contain campaign contribution limits. Senate President Pro Tem Charlie Shields (R-St. Joseph), that bill’s sponsor, has opposed reinstating campaign contribution limits, contending that they don’t work, but rather that they provide an incentive to get around the limits through various means.
Ethics became a high priority item of the legislative session after a series of events cast an ethical cloud over the General Assembly. Three St. Louis Democrats resigned the legislature after pleading guilty to federal felonies. A federal grand jury, meeting in Kansas City, has been raising questions about how former House Speaker Rod Jetton, a Republican from Marble Hill, handled legislation during his time in power. Jetton also managed a political consulting business while serving in the legislature.
A big sticking point in the debate over ethics legislation at the Capitol is whether to include limits on campaign contributions. While the Senate might be resistant, House leaders says they might accept them on an ethics bill.
House Speaker Ron Richard (R-Joplin) says everything is on the table with ethics reform. Speaker Pro Tem Bryan Pratt (R-Blue Springs) says that though ethics during the legislative session and donation limits during campaigns might seem like two separate issues, they often mesh.
“Here’s the reality to it. You have campaign finance laws and if you violate campaign finance laws, then it gets into ethics-type issues,” Pratt says. “So, I mean, that’s where it meshes. The campaign finance laws dictate how we run campaigns and how you raise money. Certainly, there will be a discussion.”
In very broad terms, Republicans have sponsored bills that target conduct during legislative sessions. Democrats want to restore campaign contribution limits. A special House committee appointed by the Speaker is reviewing the various pieces of legislation filed this year. It has been charged with sending one, comprehensive bill to the House floor for debate.
House Majority Floor Leader Steven Tilley, a Republican from Perryville, sponsors one of the ethics bills the committee is considering. Tilley says he’s keeping the overall goal in mind.
“I want to see something that’s all encompassing, that structurally changes the way things are operated here,” Tilley says.
Tilley doesn’t care much for campaign contribution limits. He prefers the system created when Republicans lifted the limits and added more reporting requirements. But he says that if campaign contribution limits are added to ethics legislation in the House, he won’t move to kill the bill.
“I believe that ethics reform is so important that if we do get a campaign cap on it, I’m going to continue the bill moving down the process,” Tilley says. “I’m not going to lay the bill over. I’m going to send it to the Senate and we’ll see what happens. But I think this year we have a unique opportunity to accomplish something.”
Tilley says he would like to get an ethics proposal to the House floor for debate before legislators leave on spring break, March 4th, but he says that might be pushing it a bit.
Suppose you had a lot of experience with a particular company.But when you left it, the law said you could not use that experience to make a living. That that is the basic issue that has stopped debate on a government ethics bill. It’s not a non-compete clause. It’s an outright ban. [Read more...]
