Five years after the resignation of Gov. John Rowland set off an orgy of ethics reforms, there are signs that the pendulum is swinging back. This is not necessarily a bad thing because despite arguments I have made previously about the need to set higher standards, it is also true that some of the reforms put in place post-Rowland targeted the wrong problems.
The need to look tough on ethics was unavoidable as Gov. Jodi Rell took office. When she took the oath, she decried the “culture of corruption” that had infested state government and pledged to clean it up. Faces grew red in the crowd that day since many of the people there had served in the Rowland administration and would now serve in hers. If they were part of a culture of corruption, then what about Rell herself?
Setting that uncomfortable question aside Rell and the legislature put in place a series of reactionary reforms. The ethics commission was abolished and re-constituted when firing a few problem employees would have done the job. New contracting standards were put in place that have proved so restrictive some agencies have had trouble getting contractors to bid on state projects. Lobbyists were unofficially declared “bad people” even though the right to petition our government is fundamental.
The biggest reform of all was the institution of public campaign financing. Advocates of public financing lobbied for years for the change and always failed until they were able to use the environment created by the impeachment proceedings to make their cause a political necessity.
Recent developments point to a recognition that the post-Rowland reforms may have missed the point. There is the controversy created when the new ethics commission tried to force a group of Catholics to register as lobbyists because they took part in a rally at the Capitol. After an opinion from the attorney general, the panel backed down. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church lobbies, but not every group of Catholics motivated to speak out needs a license to do so. In this case, the quest for purity was corrupted by a bureaucratic devotion to consistency. The itch to register everyone who expresses an opinion as a lobbyist goes too far.
Another milestone came during a June budget debate when state Rep. John “Corky” Mazurek — a Democrat — offered an amendment to use $60 million set aside to finance political campaigns to help balance the budget. Corky’s quirky calculation would have been considered political suicide five years ago, but this year it was hard to argue against such a common sense idea.
As state Rep. Arthur O’Neill pointed out, there was no evidence the old campaign finance system had anything to do with the corruption surrounding Rowland. No one disputed O’Neill’s argument because the passage of the public financing system was an over-reaction that will cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
The greatest irony is that none of the post-Rowland reforms have ended the ethical lapses. Rell herself was caught in two mini-scandals involving fundraising during her 2006 campaign and the two major cases currently making headlines involve one senator’s mismanagement of his political action committee and another who forged documents in an effort to access those clean public funds.
There is still work to be done on ethics in state government, but much of the work done to date has been a solution to problems that did not exist.
Dean Pagani is a former gubernatorial advisor. He is vice president of public affairs for Cashman and Katz Integrated Communications in Glastonbury.
