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House committee hears five takes on ethics reform

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The House Committee on General Laws spent an hour-and-a-half Tuesday afternoon hearing five different proposals that all take different approaches at ethics reform. Lawmakers left that hearing appearing to agree that ethics reform is needed. Governor Jay Nixon and Secretary of State Jason Kander have also called for ethics reform, and legislation on the issue was also heard in a Senate committee Tuesday afternoon.

Three of those bills include a limitation on how quickly after leaving office a former legislator can become a lobbyist. That was one provision that drew criticism from some lawmakers.

Representative Rocky Miller (R-Tuscumbia) questions the need for such a provision.

“Everybody wants to limit what somebody does for a living. I thought the whole point of being a free nation was that we could grow up and become adults and go to work and do what we want to do for a living.”

Representative Mike Colona (D-St. Louis County) says such provisions could cause the law to be thrown out by a judge.

“You’re telling me I can’t work in an industry that I’ve been in for the last 8 years, or 6 years, or 4 years, to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Representative Kevin McManus (D-Kansas City) says one problem with lawmakers immediately becoming lobbyists is that those individuals would be allowed to convert campaign contributions to personal use for someone else.

He explains to one committee member, “If you employ me to work on your campaign and you pay me $10,000 and I don’t do one thing, you’ve just transferred your campaign funds to me and we’ve gotten around this whole issue of converting campaign funds to private use.”

Committee Chairman Caleb Jones (R-Columbia) suggests that rather than one, comprehensive proposal, the committee should consider sending out several bills that address different ethics issues.

“My concern is,” Jones says, “that this would go before a judge on one piece of [a large bill], the judge is going to throw the whole bill out and we’re stuck back where we are, where the public keeps having concerns about how we operate.”

McManus, whose proposal is the largest of the five heard Tuesday, told Jones he would be open to breaking its provisions up into a series of bills.

Policy Director John Scott with the Secretary of State’s Office commended the committee for taking on the ethics issue.

“I think it speaks well of the committee … I think Missourians around the state who have expressed support for ethics reform would really appreciate that.”

The committee has not voted on any of those bills.

The five proposals are:

HB 1340 (McManus)

HB 1440 (Randy Dunn)

HB 1258 (Caleb Rowden)

HB 1260 (Jones)

HB 1267 (Robert Cornejo)

Secy. Kander, Rep. McManus, proposes sweeping ethics, campaign finance reform

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Secretary of State Jason Kander is proposing what he calls “new, sweeping legislation to improve Missouri’s worst-in-the-nation ethics and campaign finance laws and make Missouri a national leader in good government.”

The measure is being sponsored by Rep. Kevin McManus (D-Kansas City), and would reinstate campaign contribution limits, ban lobbyist gifts to elected officials and their staff, and close the legislator-to-lobbyist revolving door, according to a press release. The bill would make it a crime to obstruct an investigation by the Missouri Ethics Commission, empower the Ethics Commission to penalize candidates for circumventing contribution limits with fines or removal from the ballot, and create whistleblower protections for individuals reporting wrongdoing to the the commission.

“The legislature’s dance around this problem has gone on long enough, and Missourians are tired of watching too many of their elected officials pretend as though this situation is beyond their control,” Kander said. “Our proposal is not a compromise that has been watered down by both sides. This is a solution to a very serious problem, and there is plenty in here for politicians of all perspectives and affiliations to dislike. But I don’t work for politicians. I work for the citizens of our state, and the nation’s worst ethics and campaign finance laws cannot be repaired by minor fixes – they can only be repaired by real change.”

Kander says current Missouri law allows politicians to accept both unlimited campaign contributions and unlimited lobbyist gifts. This proposal would not only prohibit politicians from collecting six figure donations and free sports tickets, it would also put an end to the secretive practices that political insiders use to avoid public scrutiny, he says.

“Currently, the lack of rules allows individuals to skirt disclosure requirements by funneling campaign contributions through chains of political action committees,” the Secretary of State’s office says. “Kander’s proposal, however, bans such money laundering and creates the presumption that a law has been broken when a campaign receives contributions from a political action committee funded primarily by one person that has already reached his or her contribution limit. It places the burden on the politician to prove otherwise.”

“Across the board, Missourians recognize that ethics and campaign finance reform is badly needed in Jefferson City,” McManus said. “I’m proud to partner with Secretary Kander to develop these solutions, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to fulfill our responsibility to Missourians.”

Kander and McManus say the legislation also recognizes that in the heat of an election year candidates may be willing to break these strict campaign finance laws if the consequences would not apply until after the candidates have benefitted from an unfair advantage.

“Consequently, the bill empowers the Missouri Ethics Commission to take swift action against candidates who violate these new rules, ranging from substantial fines during the campaign to ordering the removal of a candidate’s name from the ballot. Because the surest way to escape punishment under current law is to lie to an ethics commission investigator, the new legislation creates the felony of obstructing an ethics investigation.”

“Crime shouldn’t pay, and cheaters shouldn’t be allowed to compete,” Kander said.

Kander and McManus’ legislation is HB 1340.

Senate sponsor says ethics bill isn’t dead (AUDIO)

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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.

AUDIO: Brent Martin reports [1:15 MP3]

Ethics legislation filed in House, passed by Senate

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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.

House leadership will allow campaign limits on ethics bill

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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.

AUDIO: Brent Martin reports [:60]

Senate stalls on ethics bill

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The state senate’s debate on new ethical standards for lawmakers and candidates has stalled on a proposal to ban legislators from becoming lobbyists after they leave office

Senator Jason Crowell of Cape Girardeau wants the ban to last for two years and include more than lobbying. He knows his chances are limited for getting approval for his plan.”I give it one in a million shot that this General Assembly is actually going to prevent itself from being lobbyists,” he says.

The Senate also is considering whether to ban former lawmakers from being appointed to judgeships. The hang-up that has stopped debate is whether to ban former legislators from returning to the Capitol after their terms to work as aides to other lawmakers.

The ethics bill has been set aside without a vote being taken on Crowell’s amendment.

A pessimist’s voice in ethics debate

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The state Senate starts work on improving ethics in state government and in political campaigns. But a voice of pessimism has been heard in the early discussions saying informed voters are the best judges of legislative and campaign ethics.

The plan from Senator Charlie Shields of St. Joseph focuses on making candidates and lawmakers more accountable for the money they get for campaigns. It redefines relations with lobbyists and keeps legislators from acting as political consultants for one another. [Read more…]