They don’t want you there
On the drive home yesterday, I caught the Phil Williams show on local talk radio. Phil was interviewing KnoxNews columnist Greg Johnson, who was advocating ethics reform. Phil and Greg were annoyed that the Citizens Advisory Group on Ethics In Government meeting was scheduled at 1:30 on a Friday with short notice (24 hours, I believe). Pretty abysmal if you ask me. The short notice, inconvenient time and place will ensure low turnout, which I honestly think is the desired result.
Mr. Johnson’s latest column says:
Lawmakers can show us the money by posting Statements of Interests on the registry’s Web site alongside campaign contributions and expenditures. If elected officials don’t want to show us their money, the play call is simple – resign.
Tennesseans have the right to know that officials put the job we pay them to do ahead of their own interests.
Besides disclosing outside interests, lawmakers should show citizens their expense money. In addition to their salaries, taxpayers pay lawmakers $141 per diem and reimburse them 33 cents per mile for official travel. Currently, expense records are in the offices of Connie Frederick, director of legislative administration. Those records by law are accessible to the public during regular business hours.
It’s also worth noting that our legislators are salaried $16,500. On the radio, Mr. Johnson seemed annoyed that our legislators may make (with salary, mileage, and per diem) a whopping $48,000 per year. Sorry, Mr. Johnson, but methinks your priorities are a bit off. That’s not a ton of money. I couldn’t take the pay cut to be a rep. IIRC, there are 132 legislators in the state. If each makes the maximum (which they don’t), that’s $6.3M. That’s small potatoes when you consider that the Tennessee .gov had exceeded its spending cap by $275,000,000 in FY04 (which is likely illegal as not everything is an emergency). Or that Jamie Hagood’s proposed $2,500,000 pet project could have paid for 52 legislators’ salaries.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned about ethics and payroll issues but attacking their modest salary level isn’t the way to go. However, tackling the consulting fees and corruption (like we got from the Tennessee Waltz) may lead to less spending. Face it folks, these fees and frauds were to buy votes for pork projects or legislation.
I realize that the salary level kind of puts it into perspective since most folks don’t comprehend how much $275M is. But that and pork spending are the real ethics issues that should be brought up today. If you go to this meeting, let me know how it goes. Remember, Tennessee Constitution, article 1, sec. 1:
That all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; for the advancement of those ends they have at all times, an unalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.
Word.
As a side note: To put the Tennessee Waltz into perspective, the FBI had to set up a dummy company and investigate for just over two years to catch that corruption. If it takes that much time and effort to catch that incident, how much other stuff do you think isn’t getting caught?
August 12th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
Your side note is one of my main points. With TW we saw the proverbial “tip of the iceberg” but, to mix metaphor, when you drag a net in the water, not all of the fish get caught in it.
I completely agree with you that the salaries and expense reimbursements are not the issue. No one can afford to be a legislator unless that person is independently wealthy (or is an attorney or something who has great flexibility of schedule).
And yes, the Governor’s panel is not exactly hiring the town crier to get everyone down to the sessions. It’s more like, “look over there!” After all, the very first people Bredesen invited to the high-level talks about ethics reforms were big-time lobbyists.