ooh, ethics!

Rob Teilhet (pronounced Tecum-seh) has decided that those under the Golden Dome might not be the best people to run the rule over themselves as we used to say at Eton (pronounced “e-TAWN”).

Back in those days, boys were boys, and sometimes girls, but everything worked out in the end.

“Allowing the legislature to police itself on ethics is like letting a criminal preside over his own court hearing,” said Representative Rob Teilhet. “The resignation of Speaker Richardson is not enough. We must address the underlying culture of corruption that has allowed self-dealing and conflicts of interest to run rampant at our Capitol. It is time for meaningful ethics reform that will help restore the public’s trust in government. Only then can we safeguard against similar problems in the future.”

Teilhet’s legislation will give the State Ethics Commission jurisdiction over complaints of conflict of interest against members of the Georgia General Assembly. Currently, such complaints are enforced by the General Assembly itself through a Joint Legislative Ethics Committee. In 2007 the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee dismissed a complaint detailing the facts that led to House Speaker Richardson’s resignation last week. The complaint was dismissed immediately, without any hearing or investigation.

If Teilhet’s proposal sounds familiar, it should. It was a centerpiece of Governor Sonny Perdue’s ethics proposals in 2005. Eventually an ethics bill passed in the waning hours of the 2005 session, but the conflict of interest provisions were removed at the insistence of the Georgia House Republican leadership.

“Governor Sonny Perdue was right in 2005. But the House leadership gutted his legislation, and the result was an ethics bill with no teeth on conflict of interest. The embarrassment of last week is a direct result of the lack of any meaningful action by the General Assembly on ethics. It is high time we strengthen Georgia’s ethics laws and get our public officials back to the business of serving constituents, rather than themselves.”