By Peter Galuszka
It’s no surprise but Virginia legislators appear to doing as little as possible to upgrade the state’s lax ethics rules. In fact, they may be backtracking on some of them.
In a rational world, one would think that something would be done after the indictment of former Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his wife on 14 federal felony counts. Maybe then the state, which has some of the weakest ethics rules for public officials in the country, would take serious corrective steps.
True to form, with only two weeks left to go in this year’s General Assembly session, legislators are still clinging to their conceit of Virginia exceptionalism.
They insist on believing that somehow the Old Dominion is still dominated by gentlemanly cavaliers who are too honest to be burdened with much oversight. Questioning their integrity disrespects people of their assumed social class and is in poor taste.
Indeed, according to Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney, the mishmash of laws is actually quite shocking when you consider just how other worldly their proposals are. Consider:
- Both the House of Delegated and Senate have bills that would require filing disclosure statements electronically instead of on paper as required now. The bills don’t require the filers to have their statements notarized. Why? Too inconvenient to do so digitally. Of course, they could make it a felony to lie on the statements, but that’s considered too harsh.
- There would be a new cap on gifts of more than $250 but no limit on how many times gifts could be given. By this logic, an individual or corporation seeking influence could give a total of $10,000 worth of gifts as long as they are split 40 ways.
- This applies only to “tangible” gifts like McDonnell’s famous, engraved Rolex watch worth $6,500 from the chief executive of dietary supplement maker Star Scientific. Most gifts given by Dominion or Altria and the like are “intangibles” similar to trips to the Master’s golf tournament in Georgia or hunting safaris in Africa. ProgressVA, an advocacy group, found that of 756 gifts they studied, only 18 were considered “tangible.”
- Lastly, and most important, there will be no ethics commission with teeth. There will be some kind of “advisory” commission that will not have the power to investigate or subpoena unlike institutions some 40 other states have. Like many forms of regulation in Virginia, this moves things to the “voluntary” level, giving those in power the benefit of the doubt.
Hopefully, Gov. Terry McAuliffe will show stronger leadership than he has so far on this issue. He has issued an executive order cutting gives to his staff to $100 but that doesn’t apply to the General Assembly.
Legislators led by the likes of House Speaker Bill Howell seem to see real ethics reform as anathema brought on by outside forces. They see it as insulting to their personal sense of honor.
Many support McDonnell who goes on trial in July. That support, however, is not showing up in “Legal Defense for Bob” funding. My guess is that he’ll cop a plea before then since he needs $1 million for his lawyers and is nowhere close to getting it.
Curiously, according to the Post, McDonnell was offered a deal by federal prosecutors to plead guilty to lying on bank statements and they’d let his wife Maureen off the hook. No deal, said McDonnell.
