SEN. BILL KETRON 2006 LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
2/6/06
SPECIAL SESSION COMPLETED, BRINGS POSITIVE CHANGE TO TENNESSEE
After almost a full month, the General Assembly has finished the special session on ethics. It was a unique month, literally from beginning to end. We began with a 10-minute argument over whether the Senate’s “Minister of the Day” should recite the session’s opening prayer in a non-denominational fashion. We finished with a three-hour debate about amending a conference committee report that, by rule, cannot be amended. In between, we allowed two senators indicted on federal bribery charges to participate, we adjourned for a day to answer a lawsuit filed in federal court by another senator, and we watched a joint Senate-House Conference Committee throw out what the General Assembly had worked more than eight months to craft in favor of creating its own ethics legislation.
The extraordinary session of the General Assembly (its technical title) passed the new ethics legislation, called The Comprehensive Governmental Ethics Reform Act of 2006, Monday afternoon, February 6. The Senate passed the bill by a 27-6 vote. The House passed the bill by a 90-5 vote. Gov. Bredesen has announced he will sign the legislation quickly, and the regular 2006 session began immediately after the special session was adjourned sine die. You can review the legislation by going to the Legislative News page of this site and using the Tennessee Legislative Information Service to access the bill, called SB7001.
The ethics bill is a massive, complex piece of legislation. The original bill proposed by the joint House-Senate Task Force was 94 pages long. The Senate considered 136 amendments to the bill and the House considered 105 amendments. The final version of the bill (“the compromise bill”) is 119 pages long. The compromise bill provides for a more open, transparent government and strengthens laws on lobbyist regulation, campaign finance rules, ethical conduct and elections, but it removed many ideas that both the Senate and House had voted to implement.
The bill is far too large to explain it all here, so I’ve selected several points to discuss that the people of the 13th District mentioned to me as being important to them.
1) LOBBYIST REGULATION
Many of you feel lobbyists have too much influence on Capitol Hill, and the compromise bill removes some of that influence. Lobbyists can no longer make political contributions or serve on state boards and commissions. Lobbyists cannot have dinner with a legislator during the session unless the lobbyist’s client or employer is present and cannot host dinners unless the entire 132-member General Assembly is invited to the dinner. They also must file more comprehensive expense reporting.
We have also built in a one-year “cooling off” period where legislators, after they leave the General Assembly, may not work as a lobbyist to the General Assembly. Some senators questioned whether one year was enough. One senator proposed a complete ban, then a five-year period, but both were considered too harsh. Legislators learn about the workings of state government in this position. I believe a former legislator should be able to use that knowledge once they have left public service, but I agree that they should not be able to walk straight into the lobbying business from their public service.
The will of the Senate and House was for stronger regulation, such as forbidding lobbyists from hosting fundraisers or having dinner with a legislator at any time. The compromise bill removed some of the stronger restrictions.
Lobbyists are a necessary and vital part of the operation of the General Assembly. Contrary to what many people have been led to believe, they provide invaluable information about legislation of all kinds that a legislator cannot get any other way. But I believe information is all they should be providing, and the people should know more about what they provide to the legislature. This bill works toward that goal, but I believe we can do more.
2) OPEN GOVERNMENT
The compromise bill includes most of what the General Assembly wants to make government more accessible and open to you. All campaign reporting will be posted on-line now. Legislators’ expense reports will be posted as well. All meetings will be open to the public now – ALL meetings. No more back-room deal-making. We didn’t pass anything to broadcast Senate committee meetings and floor sessions on Internet streaming video as the House currently provides, but it was considered and did receive some support, including mine. The sentiment is growing to do that, and I think we will have streaming video in the Senate in the not-too-distant future.
Open government is a particularly important issue to me. I am your employee. You elect me and your tax dollars pay me. My job is to represent you and, with your input, do what I believe is best for the 13th District. I think you should be able to see how I do that, as much as possible. You’ll never be able to see everything we do because the job is too comprehensive to make that happen. But you can see what we do in Nashville. The compromise bill goes a long way toward providing you with a wide open view of your government. I hope the General Assembly will work to provide more openness in the future.
3) ELECTION/ETHICAL REFORM
The compromise bill goes against the will of the Senate and House by creating an independent ethics commission to handle ethical complaints separate from the Registry of Election Finance. I proposed an amendment to the original ethics bill that would have merged the Registry, which manages elections in Tennessee, with an independent ethics commission. Most ethics complaints concern elections. I believe it makes good sense to have the two bodies merged into one. The merged entity would have cut back on bureaucracy, assured consistent regulation of ethical standards and elections, and saved taxpayers $150,000 per year.
Both the Senate (by a 19-10 vote) and House (by a 65-31 vote) easily passed the amendment but the conference committee eliminated the merger from the compromise bill, preferring instead to have two separate agencies doing what I believe will essentially be the same thing. I’m not sure what disappoints me more – keeping these two commissions separate or the conference committee rejecting the strongly-expressed will of the Senate and House.
We’ve also done one thing I think is very important. We’ve created a class on ethical standards that each newly-elected legislator will be required to attend before they are sworn into office. I believe people who are elected to office at any level are community leaders and have a solid grasp of ethics before they are elected. This class will help cement those views and assure that legislators are thinking ethically at all times. Hopefully, the class will help prevent another Tennessee Waltz from happening.
4) CAMPAIGN FINANCE
More than any other issue I heard you express, you said you wanted the General Assembly to get the money out of politics. Tennesseans were at first shocked, then made angry by Tennessee Waltz, and they see the perceived “culture of money” as the root cause of the problem. You told me you want it stopped. I don’t think this bill does much to stop it.
Accepting bribes is already illegal, and there is nothing the General Assembly can do to make it more illegal. But the Senate and House had approved amendments to the original ethics bill that significantly cut the amount of money individuals and PACs could give to candidates. Each candidate could only receive $1,000 per election per person or PAC, or $2,000 for each election cycle assuming there is a primary election. In the Senate we set a total limit per person at $25,000 per two-year period. The House set the same candidate and PAC limits and set the personal limit at $100,000. The Senate set limits for giving to the party caucuses and the House set limits for caucuses and the political parties themselves. And both chambers eliminated cash contributions altogether.
The conference committee threw all that out and made no changes to the amounts a candidate can receive. Senators can still receive $7,500 and House members can still receive $5,000 from PACs and individuals per year. There are no limits in the compromise bill on the total amounts PACs can give to a candidate, caucus or party. The individual limit is set at $101,400 every two years, which is the same as the federal limit. Cash contributions of $50 per person per election will also be allowed, but legislators are not required to record these contributions individually. Several senators on the conference committee complained strongly about the lack of money restrictions, to no avail.
I believe most legislators understand that the amount of money floating around in politics has gotten out of hand. One senator elected in 2004 spent more than $400,000 to win what is considered a part-time job that will pay them $16,500 per year over their four-year term, and the cost of elections this year will go higher. What the Senate and House wanted to do was take away the ability of big-dollar political interests to buy elections. The conference committee eliminated much of that effort. As a result, I believe the compromise bill does little to do what I think people want the most regarding ethical reform – get the money out.
MY CONCLUSIONS
A special session is a unique process. Each chamber decides its rules at the outset, and in this session each decided to manage this process differently. The House chose to go through the regular committee process and the Senate chose to meet as a “Committee of the Whole.” Even with that difference, I believe we have developed legislation that is a good start to comprehensive ethical reform in Tennessee.
Clearly we should be doing more. We’ve done little to eliminate the extreme amounts of money from politics and political campaigns. We can do more to keep lobbyists from having such a financial influence on the political process. Both chambers wanted a merged Registry and ethics commission, which would save you money and bureaucratic headaches.
But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and as the General Assembly see examples of loopholes we will seek to close them. The compromise bill is not perfect, but the pros outweigh the cons. I believe it is important that we do more to police ourselves and make sure that the public can be more involved in the process. Therefore, I voted for the bill. If the compromise bill was a complete travesty, I’d have voted to scrap it and begin again. But the bill makes real strides toward comprehensive ethical reform. We can always pass more ethics legislation during the regular session, and I believe a number of bills will be filed this session for that purpose. We’re off to a good start.
Two things are important to me above all else. We must never allow a Tennessee Waltz to happen again, and we must rebuild your trust in us and government. This bill begins achieving those goals, and I am proud to have played a role in its passage.
THE LAST DAY CONTROVERSY
Many of you may have heard about the lengthy Senate debate on Monday, where several Democrats attempted to have the Senate consider attaching 11 minority reports to the conference committee report. A minority report is a way to attempt to amend a conference committee report which, technically, is against Senate rules. These reports would have put back in the Senate version of the bill many of the campaign finance aspects that the conference committee took out of the bill. The Democrats were unsuccessful in getting any of the reports considered. I voted against considering the reports for two reasons.
First, my interpretation of the Senate rule regarding these reports is that to be properly filed for consideration, a minority report must be signed by a House member who sat on the conference committee. I believe in following Senate rules. None of these reports was signed by a qualified House member. Therefore, by rule, the reports were not properly filed, which I believe means they literally never existed in the Senate. I could not vote to consider something that did not exist.
Second, even though I support most if not all of what these reports entail, had we approved even one of these reports the House could have rejected our action. Had this happened, the compromise bill would not have passed and a second conference committee would convene to try to find an agreement. One committee could not work out an agreement everyone liked, and there was no guarantee a second would have any more success. We could easily have wound up spending a month of taxpayer money for nothing.
Several Democrats attempted in the media to make Republicans’ refusal to consider the reports a partisan issue. As you can see, voting no was anything but a partisan issue.
DISTRICT 29 ELECTION
We considered more than just the ethics bill during the special session. We also reviewed the special Senate District 29 election held this past fall in Memphis to replace former Sen. John Ford, who resigned under the weight of a federal bribery indictment triggered by Tennessee Waltz. We literally had to stop the special session in mid-stream to travel to U.S. District Court in Memphis after 31 of my Senate colleagues and I were named as co-defendants in a lawsuit filed by Sen. Ophelia Ford, John Ford’s sister and the declared winner of the election by 13 votes.
Ophelia Ford filed the lawsuit and won a temporary restraining order after the Senate, meeting first as a “Committee of the Whole,” voted 17-14 for a resolution to void the election and remove her from office due to voting irregularities. The restraining order prevented the Senate from taking a second and final vote on the resolution as the full Senate. The lawsuit asked that the Senate not be allowed to void the election or remove Sen. Ford until a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation report on the election was presented to the Senate. Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers defended the Senate, arguing that the Tennessee Constitution gives the Senate the authority to control its own body and make this decision.
U.S. District Judge Bernice Donald ruled for the Senate, lifting the restraining order and writing in her opinion that the Senate did have the right to remove Sen. Ford. But Judge Donald ordered that the Senate first create a standard policy for voiding elections in this manner before it takes the second vote on the District 29 election. That standard is being developed now and barring any unforeseen complications, the Senate should be taking a final vote to void the election, remove Sen. Ford and order a new District 29 election soon.
I voted for the resolution because it has been confirmed that votes were cast using the names and identifications of at least two dead people, and that at least two convicted felons voted illegally. We have all heard the charges about ballots being signed illegally, not signed and signed by a forger as well, but they have not yet been confirmed. There are also charges, as yet unproven, that as many as 160 more votes in the election were illegally cast. But I believe the four votes from deceased people and felons alone make this election illegal, and an illegal election cannot ethically be allowed to stand.
ON A HAPPIER NOTE…
I want to extend a hearty welcome to former Democrat Sen. Don McLeary from Humboldt, who became a Republican this past Friday. I know he thought long and hard about his decision to change his political affiliation, and he was pressured hard by the state Democratic Party to remain a Democrat. But he now feels the Republican Party is more closely aligned with his beliefs and the beliefs of the people of his district. I consider Sen. McLeary to be a good friend and I’m very happy to have him with us. Sen. McLeary’s move now gives Republicans an 18-15 advantage in the state Senate.
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