States Offer Grim Look at Curbing Corruption

As lawmakers wrestle this week with overhauling ethics and lobbying guidelines for Congress, they need only to look to the states for sobering examples of how hard it is to curb political malfeasance.

Many states made rule changes years ago that the House and Senate are now contemplating. But even those that imposed the toughest restrictions and oversight continue to grapple with problems of corruption and how to keep it in check.

In about the last year, charges of political wrongdoing have surfaced in nearly a dozen states, including Alaska, Kentucky, New Mexico and Ohio.

The scandals underscore that policing political ethics “is a work in progress, as with any of these efforts to regulate unfortunately what is human nature -- exercising power in a way that can be in one’s self-interest,” said Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause.

Nearly two dozen states, including California, have established some sort of outside oversight of their legislatures. But it is a patchwork quilt of panels with varying degrees of independence, authority and funding -- and uneven track records of effectiveness, proponents of changes in congressional ethics rules acknowledge.

Still, several watchdog groups say the time has come for Congress to create an independent commission that would investigate ethics complaints against lawmakers and turn over its findings to House and Senate ethics committees for action. Such a move, good-government groups say, is the only way to overcome the deep reluctance members of Congress have shown in scrutinizing their peers.

The idea is likely to face stiff resistance on Capitol Hill, where many lawmakers already are balking at more modest reform proposals put forward by the Republican leadership.

For instance, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has backed off a push to permanently ban private groups from financing travel by lawmakers. He intends to propose a temporary moratorium on such travel through the end of the year, giving House members more time to consider the issue.

In the Senate, GOP-backed legislation would crack down on travel and gifts, make it harder for lawmakers to add funding into bills for special projects that benefit their states and require members of Congress to wait two years instead of one before returning to Capitol Hill as lobbyists. Key committees will start grappling with these proposals this week.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has introduced a bill that would create an independent commission modeled on panels in Kentucky, Tennessee and Florida that would investigate ethics charges brought against members of Congress.

The panel, made up of former House and Senate members from both parties, would turn its findings over to the Department of Justice or to each chamber’s ethics committee.

“We can pass all the ethics reforms we want ... but none of them will make a difference if there isn’t a nonpartisan, independent commission that will help us enforce those laws,” Obama said when he unveiled the bill last week. “You can’t clean up corruption by trusting Congress to police itself.”

But in many states where such panels exist, commission officials have found it hard to guard their authority and their budgets from the legislatures they are charged with policing.

“What happens in the states too often is that when the ethics commission oversees the Legislature, and the Legislature gets mad at them, they cut their budget,” said Peggy Kerns, director of the Center for Ethics in Government of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Kerns noted that members of Kentucky’s independent ethics commission so aggressively investigated state legislators in the 1990s that the lawmakers “took away their power to initiate complaints. Now, they can only investigate complaints that come to them.”

The panel oversees ethics standards for the Legislature and the executive branch. But its limitations were demonstrated last year when a scandal erupted over Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s decision to preemptively pardon any official who might be charged as part of an investigation into whether his administration broke state law in its appointment process.

The ethics commission is investigating the alleged violations, but it is restricted to imposing civil fines or sanctions.

In California, a budget shortfall forced the Fair Political Practices Commission, created in 1974, to close about 225 cases in 2005 before the investigations were finished.

The commission, considered one of the strongest in the nation, administers and enforces rules on campaign finance and lobbying.

The rules are more stringent than the ones in Congress. For instance, lobbyists in California can spend no more than $10 a month on lawmakers -- the so-called hamburger rule. Private groups are severely restricted in the types of travel they can underwrite for lawmakers. California law also requires lawmakers, their staff and lobbyists to take a course on ethics every two years.

Feng, the California Common Cause director, credits the commission for being partly responsible for what she views as California’s relatively clean political system. The panel, she said, serves as a deterrent and an educator, advising legislators and other elected officials on ethical questions.

But still, Feng said, “There is one lesson to be learned from the FPPC -- it’s very important that the agency be fully funded and that the funding stream not be held hostage to the political whims of the legislative body.”

Rhode Island is the only state where an independent ethics commission is constitutionality empowered to remove state legislators from office for offenses. But the commission must “beg and plead for more money and personnel” from the lawmakers it polices, said Katherine D’Arezzo, the panel’s senior lawyer.

“It is an inherent conflict of interest,” she said. “The very people we have jurisdiction over control our purse strings.”

As the debate over the best approach to congressional ethics reform heats up, the scandals that have rocked Washington may provide a spark for legislation in state capitols.

“Clearly, what happens at the federal level does affect the rest of the country,” said Fred Herrmann, executive director of the New Jersey Ethics Commission. “The response has been: Let’s take another look at the strength of our ethics agencies, at these laws, and see what we can do to strengthen them.”

In Tennessee, Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen called a special session of the Legislature in late December to pass tougher ethics regulations.

Bredesen’s move was spurred partly by an FBI sting, dubbed “the Tennessee Waltz” that last spring resulted in the indictment of five state lawmakers -- four Democrats and a Republican -- on charges of extortion.

But it gained momentum from scandals in Washington involving former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-San Diego) and lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Cunningham pleaded guilty in November to soliciting more than $2 million in bribes from defense contractors in return for steering tens of millions of dollars in government contracts their way. He resigned his office.

In early January, Abramoff pleaded guilty to federal charges of fraud and conspiracy to bribe lawmakers on behalf of his Indian gaming clients. He is cooperating with a federal task force investigating influence peddling on Capitol Hill.

“There is no question but that everyone has a much more heightened focus on [corruption] because of what’s gone on in Washington,” Bredesen said.

In New York, Washington’s scandals have given fresh impetus to efforts to tighten restrictions on the gifts that lobbyists can give lawmakers.

“People are feeling bullish on the prospects for reform,” said Blair Horner, legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonpartisan advocacy group for good government. “To some extent, the Abramoff gasoline has been spread on the reform fire.”

Times staff writer Mark Z. Barabak contributed to this report from Sacramento.