NEW IPO Logo - by Charles Larry Home Search Browse About IPO Staff Links

Politics

Ethics of legislating legislative ethics

By CHARLES N. WHEELER III

Charles N. Wheeler III

Bashing the U.S. Congress is a popular sport these days, so it was hardly surprising that the Illinois General Assembly last month climbed aboard the bandwagon for a 203-year-old amendment to prevent mid-term pay raises for members of Congress. With only four dissenting votes, Illinois became the 40th state to ratify the amendment, first proposed in 1789 by James Madison, who believed it unseemly for sitting members of Congress to collect pay raises without facing the voters. Madison's amendment was approved by six states within two years, but then languished for almost two centuries before finally achieving the required three-fourths vote in the wake of current dissatisfaction with Congress.

Illinois lawmakers should not pat themselves on the back too hard, however, for getting tough with those varmints along the Potomac because it's always easier to mind someone else's morals. Indeed, the strictures envisioned by Madison are the same ones under which legislators, state elected officials and top bureaucrats — but not the judiciary — now labor in Illinois.

When it comes to meaningful ethics legislation on the state level, though, the sad truth is that the General Assembly has been a no-show for these many years. Dozens of proposals have been introduced in the past covering lobbying disclosure, campaign financing limits, conflicts of interest and other ethical areas. Few achieved more than death with dignity in committee; none were enacted. "Our perception from 20 years of effort is that the only time legislators vote in favor of this is when they know that it will die at a later step in the process," said Tracy Litsey, executive director of Illinois Common Cause, a citizens' group that has long sought greater openness and improved accountability in government.

Last year, for example, provisions covering lobbyist registration, disclosure of economic interests and creation of a state ethics board surfaced as a House amendment to a Senate bill in the final week of June, ultimately clearing the House without dissent. Alas, the package never was called for concurrence in the Senate, a scenario all too familiar to Common Cause. "It gave those in the House a chance to go on record for an ethics bill they knew would die," said Litsey. "There's kind of this scuttling going on where everybody has an alibi .... It's a game Springfield legislators seem to have down to a science."

This year, Common Cause renewed its battle to strengthen lobbyist disclosure regulations, sought to limit legislators' ability to convert campaign contributions to personal use and tried to put legal backbone into existing conflict-of-interest guidelines. All to no avail, as the measures remained bottled up in committee. "We tried to introduce the simplest, most common-sense, barebone things we thought would be palatable to legislators to pass," Litsey said. "We stuck to the most reasonable proposals, but we still got swept aside."

If legislators are serious about improving the image of elected officials, however, there's still time before the spring session ends, as last year's 11th-hour maneuver shows.

A good place to start would be the Lobbyist Registration Act, whose current disclosure provisions are more loophole than law, thanks largely to a commonly accepted interpretation of the act. Under this view, a lobbyist does not have to report what he spends to wine and dine a lawmaker unless specific legislation is discussed. Expenditures for meals, travel, entertainment and other benefits designed merely to cultivate legislative goodwill can be ignored. As a

6/June 1992/Illinois Issues


result, some of the most powerful interest groups in the Statehouse report spending little or nothing for lobbying; indeed, in recent years Common Cause consistently has reported spending more than any other lobbying group, a dead giveaway that the act is flawed. Moreover, while the secretary of state stores the registration forms and disclosure reports, the law assigns no clear responsibility for reviewing or auditing the information. Thus, many lobbyists fail to submit reports on time.

The aim of any lobbyist disclosure law should be to provide the public complete and accurate information about special interests' attempts to influence legislators and other government decisionmakers. The information should include how much is being spent, who's spending it and who are the beneficiaries. Changes like those proposed by Common Cause would do a lot to beef up the current law.

Under legislation championed by the group, lobbyists would be required to report aggregate spending by client in a half dozen different categories, including one encompassing gifts, honoraria, travel, lodging, entertainment, meals, beverages and other expenses paid for someone else. Individual expenditures of $50 or more in the final category would have to be itemized, including the name of the recipient. In addition, the secretary of state would be charged with reviewing the disclosure forms and notifying the attorney general or state's attorney of possible violations.

These revisions seem modest enough, yet they would provide a clearer picture of how much is being spent on lobbying. And should lawmakers find shedding a little light on what the special interests are doing too uncomfortable, Common Cause is prepared with its own spotlight, ready to let the folks back in the district know the real score. "In the past, we tried to play by the rules, not throw stones at legislators," explained Litsey. "We were led to believe if we compromised, we'd be rewarded. We discovered that was not the case." So this year, the group intends to tell people "how ethics bills die these quiet deaths and everybody has their alibi," she said. "We want to make sure the public isn't deluded into thinking there's been any progress, because there hasn't."

Charles N. Wheeler III is a correspondent in the Springfield Bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times.

June 1992/Illinois Issues/7


|Home| |Search| |Back to Periodicals Available| |Table of Contents| |Back to Illinois Issues 1992|
Illinois Periodicals Online (IPO) is a digital imaging project at the Northern Illinois University Libraries funded by the Illinois State Library