Jon Ralston on the shameful state of our disclosure laws

By Jon Ralston (contact)

Friday, Sept. 14, 2007 | 7:37 a.m.

Some end-of-the-week notes on how the state's campaign disclosure and ethics laws are once again exposed as laughable:

I single out the governor - although many, if not most , elected officials do it - because, among other reasons, he is the state's highest elected official. Consider:

Last week he raised money - sources say mostly from pharmaceutical folks - at an event that netted him about $20,000. Will he use those donations to contribute to other Republicans, to travel to far-flung lands, to tip his security detail? We don't know because he doesn't have to disclose until next year.

As for the legal defense fund, which the governor disclosed only after pressed, he doesn't have to reveal that money until next year, either. And he has an active effort under way being run by two prominent businessmen, Sig Rogich and Monte Miller. We have no idea who m they have solicited and how much they have raised. And they don't have to tell.

Why is this relevant? Here's a simple example:

What if during this period of nondisclosure in which he is trying to score political points on the United/Sierra Health merger, Gibbons were taking campaign or legal defense fund money from either company? Or what if he were accepting large donations from doctors opposed to the marriage of the two behemoths? Would the public want to know that contemporaneously?

Gibbons is not the only one doing it. Other constitutional officers, lawmakers and local government officials are equally guilty, and because the Legislature won't require near-instantaneous disclosure on the Web, we have no idea whether this money is being collected in proximity to important governmental action.

And that's just the way they like it.

I am not a fan of the initiative process. But amid all the chatter about raising the gaming tax through that process, taking any tax policy thoughts out of the hands of heretofore-thoughtless lawmakers, how about one to mandate campaign contribution disclosure within 48 hours on the Internet?

You want more sunshine in government? Put that one on the ballot. And just see who lines up to oppose it.

The ethics hearing three years ago actually featured Goodman openly displaying his moral and ethical code when asked by a member whether he would have a problem calling the mayor of Toledo, Ohio, to pitch his son's campaign product - as he had at a national mayor s conference in Washington, D.C., which landed His Honor before the ethics panel.

Goodman told a flabbergasted Ethics Commission he would have no problem making such a pitch to his Toledo counterpart on his son's behalf - that is exactly what he did in D.C. and exactly what the law (using your position to benefit someone else) is designed to prevent.

And, yet, the panel found Goodman's actions weren't willful, albeit that he violated the law. That already weak finding was overturned by a District Court judge, a decision unanimously upheld by the state Supreme Court.

So now we know: Goodman is ethical. And O.J. Simpson is not guilty.

The larger issue here, of course, is that the state's ethics laws do not work and the commission impaneled to enforce them has become a laughingstock, disrespected by the courts and the populace. So it's time to start over, time to repeal the law and scrap the commission, then gather some thoughtful folks to decide whether there is any use to having such statutes and a toothless commission.

The law, though passed with the best of intentions, doesn't work. The commission, though it has had some good people, can't do its job. And so politicians can operate unfettered, knowing that the ethical ethos ratified by the courts means they can do what they want, whether it's helping their families or friends or helping themselves.