Ethical / Unethical: the Blurry Line : Legislators Are Basically Honest, but System Needs Tightening

In attempting to acquit Bruce Young of campaign-disclosure violations and political-corruption charges, the former assemblyman’s lawyer sought to indict the California Legislature. When it came to collecting and disclosing campaign contributions and outside earned income, the lawyer suggested, Young did little or nothing more than engage in practices that were commonplace in Sacramento.

The argument failed to sway the jury, and it shouldn’t have. Many negative and accurate assertions can be made about influence-brokering in Sacramento, and the line between ethical and unethical behavior is often a blurry one. But flagrant violations of the law are the exception, not the rule. And Young, according to the jury, flagrantly violated the law.

His failure to disclose payments made to him by fireworks magnate Patrick Moriarty was particularly serious because Young was aggressively pushing legislation that would have directly benefited Moriarty’s business. And it was precisely for the purpose of revealing such potential conflicts of interest that California’s disclosure laws were enacted.

Nevertheless, the Young-Moriarty case can’t help but focus attention again on the seamy side of Sacramento politics. To some extent we must acknowledge that the effort to indict the legislative process had more truth to it than ought to be the case. While Young may have clearly overstepped the boundary between ethical and unethical behavior, there’s a great deal of undesirable legislative activity that occurs along that boundary.

Perhaps the most disturbing reality is the relentless pursuit of seemingly limitless amounts of campaign contributions. The legislative session is barely a month old, and $500-per-person fund raisers (attended almost exclusively by lobbyists hoping for returns on their investments) are already a daily occurrence in Sacramento.

And herein lies the systemic problem that will occasionally entice a Bruce Young into an outright unethical or sometimes even illegal activity. Too many legislators feel that they must raise too much money from people who want something from them. That oppressive reality dominates Sacramento politics, encouraging even the most honorable of legislators to function on the blurry borderline between ethical and unethical, or even illegal, activity.

The other systemic problem revealed in the Bruce Young episode has to do with outside income earned by legislators, and the drive or need that many legislators feel to produce such income.

The simple fact is that legislative salaries, which are now $37,105 a year, are much too low. A legislator with one or two children and a need to maintain two residences may have difficulty functioning on such a salary. Moreover, the most common major expense that legislators encounter--regular airplane travel to and from Sacramento--is not covered by the state.

Legislators have learned to cope with these circumstances by resorting to several alternative funding mechanisms: the granting of excessive per-diem allowances; the establishment of various perquisites and benefits, including the free use of state-leased cars; the use of campaign funds to pay for travel and other expenses (which forces them to raise more than electoral needs demand), and the maintenance or creation of other income opportunities--honoraria and/or insurance, real-estate, consulting businesses, and so forth. All of this can produce conflicts of interest with legislative responsibilities.

None of these solutions to the problem of low salaries seem legitimate from a public-interest point of view. The public, then, would be wise to offer its representatives a substantial increase in salary along with payment for legitimate expenses, including travel, in exchange for the elimination of inappropriate perks and per-diem allowances and a stiff limit or ban on all outside earned income, including honoraria.

This would reduce both campaign fund-raising and needs for outside income, and thus the potential for conflict of interest.

Unfortunately, the Legislature appears unwilling or unable to enact major reforms either in campaign financing or salary structures. On the campaign financing issue, Gov. George Deukmejian, most Republican legislators and some Democrats remain adamantly opposed to comprehensive reform proposals--most of which include at least some public financing.

As for salary reform, Speaker Willie Brown has a proposal that moves in the right direction. But many legislators appear unwilling to ask the public for a substantial salary increase, while others may be unwilling to relinquish opportunities to earn money elsewhere.

In politics, individual politicians may make headlines. But the systemic forces within which all politicians function are, in the long run at least, of far greater import. As unethical as his activities may have been, Young had only one vote. The unrelenting pressures that are produced by California’s campaign-funding crisis, by contrast, exert widespread and continuing effects on dozens of votes.

The real lesson, then, of the Young affair should be the need for systemic reform.