Despite promises of a bipartisan deal, an ethics reform bill that Democrats said would revoke the pensions of corrupt politicians fell apart by the time the sun set.
A fuming Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr. accused his Republican colleagues of “working to blow up ethics reform” because of election-year politics and the fact a GOP senator was disgruntled about not getting a key committee assignment.
He also accused the minority party of “sticking a finger in the eye” of the governor, a fellow Republican who supports the bill and who he believed had garnered support from the GOP for the legislation.
But the Republican leaders strongly denied the accusations and said they don’t like the bill because, as it’s currently written, they believe it does not truly revoke pensions. Rather, they said the legislation — about four years in the making — would allow a corrupt politician to have his or her fines and penalties deducted from their government pension.
“We should take your pension and you should pay fines out of your own money,” said Sen. John McKinney, the Republican Senate leader from Fairfield. Democrats denied that’s what the legislation would do.
Wednesday’s spat made it unclear whether lawmakers will finally reach an agreement on one of the ethics reforms proposals that has been lingering since the corruption scandal that led to the downfall of former Gov. John G. Rowland. The session ends May 7.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell said through a spokesman that she still hopes an agreement can be passed before lawmakers adjourn.
Democrats and Rell’s office said the bill reduces an official’s pension by the amount of the fines, penalties, restitution and cost of incarceration the corrupt official is facing. The state attorney general can go to court and ask that those fines and penalities equal the total actuarial value of the person’s pension.
“She does want revocation. She believes the language will accommodate revocation. Her goal is to get a bill that can pass both chambers,” said Rell spokesman Chris Cooper.
The Democrats needed the Republicans to agree to suspend their rules Wednesday to take up the ethics reform bill, but the GOP refused. Williams said he’ll try again next week.
The pension issue has been a controversial one for years at the Capitol. The main sticking point has been whether to make the revocation retroactive to affect Rowland and other public officials who have gotten in trouble with the law.
This latest version of the bill is not retroactive.
Rep. Chris Caruso, D-Bridgeport, said the public wants the bill to be retroactive and he’s not giving up on the issue.
“The House never signed off on the ethics bill. That’s just a fact,” said Caruso, co-chairman of the legislature’s Government Administration and Elections Committee. “It’s not over ’til it’s over.”
Besides pension revocation, the bill mandates ethics training for state lawmakers and bans the legislature’s and the governor’s chiefs of staff from soliciting campaign contributions.
That provision stems from a controversy in 2005 when Lisa Moody, Rell’s chief of staff, distributed invitations to a Rell campaign fundraiser to state commissioners from her state Capitol office for dispersal.
The State Elections Enforcement Commission later fined 13 agency commissioners and three deputies $500 each for illegally soliciting campaign contributions from subordinates and others. But Moody was not fined because the law did not apply to her position.
Other provisions of the bill include the following:
— Making failure to report a bribe a crime.
— Including the governor’s spouse as a “public official” under the ethics code.
— Limits gifts to public officials for major life events, such as the birth of a child, to $1,000 or less.
— Prohibits state contractors from offering a job to a state employee who participated significantly in awarding a state contract to that firm.
