The disclosure last week that House Speaker Glenn Richardson has been drawing over $100,000 from the MMV Alliance Fund, a PAC specially set up for him in his new role as Speaker adds to the mounting evidence that change in control in the Capitol has not brought the greater respect for ethical governance we had hoped for.
Richardson claims in his own AJC article that Republicans passed "the most sweeping ethics reform in the history of Georgia" last year. The Speaker fails to note that he was personally responsible for taking a very strong bill offered by Governor Perdue and removing the most significant reforms. The Ethics reform bill of 2005 was a good step forward, and we do have stronger laws regulating lobbying as a result. But all of the reform was on the supply side. House Republicans removed almost every attempt in the Governor's bill to enforce more ethical behavior on the part of elected officials. A stronger stance by Senate leaders last year and some last minute arm twisting by the Governor were the only things that gave us any ethics reform at all in 2005.
When Democrats were in control, did House leaders exhibit a similar reluctance to pass laws limiting their own ability to accept money and gifts from lobbyists? Absolutely, as Common Cause, the press, and others observed at the time. Our public statements placed the blame for the failure to pass what would have been truly the most significant ethics reform in state history in 2004 squarely where it belonged.
In 2004, the Republican Senate passed Governor Perdue's ethics reform bill. Under the leadership of Chair Mary Margaret Oliver, the House Judiciary committee endorsed that bill with unanimous bi-partisan support and added campaign finance reform measures. But that bill got no further. It was dead on arrival at the Democratic controlled Rules Committee.
We publicly criticized then Speaker Coleman and his lieutenants Jimmy Skipper and Calvin Smyre for killing the reforms. It was rumored that Skipper counseled his colleagues that passing the bill would result in having them all wearing "orange jumpsuits." Coleman's quote on the Richardson MMV fund was in keeping with his previous attitudes on reform. "I had a Speaker's PAC... but [Republicans] have developed it into a fine science. My hat's off to them."
The problem isn't with Republican or Democratic leadership, conservative or liberal leadership, black or white leadership, rural, suburban, or urban leadership. The problem is an amazing arrogance of power that makes some leaders forget that they were elected to serve the people of Georgia, not those individuals, corporations, and associations which bring $20,000 checks to the Capitol looking for special treatment in return.
Georgians need to let their legislative leaders past and present know that they work for us, and this blatant courting of special interest money, legal or not, stinks to high heaven and needs to stop.
