Tony Messenger Report of Ethics Bill

Tony Messenger of of the St. Louis Dispatch Covered an Ethics committee meeting. These meetings aren't normally publicly broadcast. Tony Messenger By Tony Messenger ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 02/16/2010 JEFFERSON CITY — Hearing Room 1 was the loneliest place in the Capitol last week. It was Thursday morning, and Rep. Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho, was holding a work session for his special House committee on ethics. Most hearings in the Capitol during the session have a decent audience of lobbyists, staff members, other lawmakers, witnesses and reporters. But not this one. Two reporters and a couple of Missouri Ethics Commission staffers took their seats to listen to Wilson and his committee start culling through the various provisions of bills put forward to improve the state's disclosure and conflict of interest laws for legislators. So not very many people heard Rep. John Burnett, D-Kansas City, ask the sort of question that doesn't get asked enough in legislative hearings. "Are we trying to craft a bill that can pass, or craft the best bill that we can?" Burnett asked Wilson. The nuance buried in that question gets to the heart of the legislative process. GET MORE bullet Read more Messenger columns Truth is, it's hard to pass bills. And when it comes to limiting what lawmakers can or can't do, well, the process becomes exponentially more difficult. Among the provisions being considered by Wilson's committee? — No more free lunches. — No more free tickets to sporting events. — No more lavish trips and airline tickets paid for by lobbyists. — No more making money as political consultants off your fellow lawmakers. — No more leaving the Legislature and immediately taking a job as a lobbyist. — No more unlimited contributions from donors. — No more ability to hide some of those contributions by laundering them through various committees. And that's just the beginning. In what is truly an unusual and bipartisan process, Wilson passed out to his committee last week a list of more than 50 general concepts proposed in the various ethics bills his committee is considering. Now, Wilson, Burnett and others will begin a series of public work sessions to sift through the issues and try to craft a single, bipartisan bill. The committee has set three work sessions alone for this week — the sort of thoughtful process that all too often doesn't occur as bills are rushed through committee to have a chance at floor debate. In answer to Burnett's question, Wilson was clear. "My intent is to come out of here with a bill we can be proud of," Wilson said. "I don't want a watered-down bill." Wilson, of course, can't control what happens after the bill leaves his committee and hits the floors of the House and Senate, places where bipartisanship is often left at the doors to the chambers. He has to look only at the beginning of the debate of an ethics bill in the Senate — the very week his committee began culling through the various proposals — to know how difficult the process might be. The Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, hit choppy waters on its first day on the floor, making it through about three hours of debate before Shields pulled it temporarily. Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau, had proposed an amendment to add a two-year prohibition against lawmakers becoming lobbyists. That idea didn't go over well with Sen. John Griesheimer, R-Washington, who proposed his own amendment that would have exempted current lawmakers from Crowell's provision. What followed was an exchange that sets the tone for how difficult it will be for lawmakers to pass meaningful ethics reform, despite the bipartisan efforts of a House committee working hard in a basement hearing room to do, as Wilson calls it, "the right thing." "Do you want to be a lobbyist?" Crowell asked incredulously of his fellow Republican. Griesheimer — who is term-limited out of the Senate after this year — was succinct in his response: "Well, maybe.