Many Lawmakers for Ethics Commission Before They Were Against It

The debate over eliminating the Tennessee Ethics Commission as a separate agency and merging it with the Registry of Election Finance is so passionate – and divisive – that many who pushed to create the independent ethics agency are the same ones who pushed for its end a few weeks ago.

Among them was Ron Ramsey, a Republican state senator from Blountville who also serves as the speaker of the Senate, making him by default the state’s lieutenant governor.

Three years ago, as a powerful senator in the Tennessee General Assembly, Ramsey was among the first to yell for the independent Ethics Commission that was created in February 2006 – in the wake of a vote-selling scandal and FBI investigation that resulted in the arrests of several state lawmakers.

But, today, Ramsey – now a 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate – is just as loudly touting his role in helping in June to kill the Ethics Commission as a separate agency.

“It saves money – $350,000 to $400,000 in staff costs,” Ramsey said of dropping the independent Ethics Commission, combining it with the election finance registry and giving the merged agency a new name: the Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance.

“That’s the biggest change it makes,” Ramsey said. “But what it doesn’t do is change how laws or rules or regulations are enforced. Nothing else at all has changed.”

Measuring effectiveness

Months ago, former state Rep. Nathan Vaughan, a Kingsport Democrat, was so outraged at how the Tennessee Ethics Commission handled his complaint against two Republican lawmakers that he sued the agency.

Now, Vaughan says that while he “wasn’t very pleased” with how the former Ethics Commission operated, he doesn’t totally buy the wisdom of folding it into another agency either.

“You just may see a situation where you have people (enforcing ethics laws) with less staff and less accountability – but the same degree of responsibilities,” Vaughan said.

At one time, Dick Williams – chairman of the government watchdog group Common Cause Tennessee – freely praised an independent Ethics Commission for vigorously trying to enforce Tennessee’s lobbying laws.

Today, Williams said, while his group never pushed for the Ethics Commission and Registry of Election Finance to be merged – and never expected it would happen – he’s “fairly positive” Tennessee ethics laws still will be aggressively enforced.

“It’s a mistake to assume the merger is going to weaken the ethics laws,” Williams said.

“From all I’ve studied, the authority, the power and the requirements of the ethics laws have all been maintained in (the new Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance),” Williams said. “And you’ll have people in different areas of expertise working together.”

In fact, Williams said, dropping the Ethics Commission as a separate group “may not necessarily be a bad thing – and might be a good thing.”

Paper pushers

A few months ago, Drew Rawlins – then merely executive director of the Registry of Election Finance – had the awkward experience of hearing powerful state Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, criticize former Ethics Commission head Bruce Androphy for referring to Rawlins and his registry staff as “paper pushers.”

Now Rawlins, executive director of the new Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance, has taken on the fired Androphy’s role as Tennessee’s top ethics enforcer. That role of “pushing” the papers now includes handling the tasks that Androphy left behind, particularly the one about ensuring that state financial disclosure laws are followed by those in and seeking public office.

“I don’t see the review process changing much, if any,” Rawlins said. “Obviously, we’ll always work to make it more efficient.”

Ramsey, Vaughan, Williams and Rawlins are among many adjusting to new sentiments and positions since June 30.

That’s when Gov. Phil Bredesen signed the state law – aggressively pushed by Ketron and other Republican legislators – to eliminate the Ethics Commission and create the Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance.

It ended the near four-year run of the Tennessee Ethics Commission.

Reacting to outrage

The commission’s birth had filled a need, following years of public outrage after several state lawmakers, who were accused of selling votes for bribes, were arrested in an FBI undercover sting operation known as “Operation Tennessee Waltz.”

State Sen. Roy Herron, D-Dresden, one of the major lawmakers responsible for creating the Ethics Commission in 2006, said the agency did help clean up state politics after the “Tennessee Waltz” mess.

“It was the single most important thing we did in response to that (scandal),” Herron said of creating the Ethics Commission. “The fact it’s been eliminated as an independent body causes me great concern – and it should everyone in Tennessee.”

Herron, a 2010 Democratic candidate for governor, said Tennessee clearly needs a separate agency that deals solely with state ethics issues.

“There’s still plenty of work that an independent ethics commission could do, both in enforcing the law and educating people about law,” Herron said. “You
need a full-time (agency) to do all that.”

Ramsey and Vaughan openly dismiss how much the Ethics Commission really accomplished in its past form.

“It really didn’t deal with many complaints and, in reality, it had relatively little to do,” Ramsey said of the former independent Ethics Commission. “It’s far more efficient to merge it, as we have. I can certainly see this working out much better.”

Vaughan sued the Ethics Commission in March stating that two months earlier, it quickly dismissed his complaint against state Reps. Glen Casada, R-Franklin, and Jason Mumpower, R-Bristol, without having enough members to hold a legal meeting.

Vaughan had charged that during his House re-election race last fall, Casada and Mumpower encouraged misleading information about Vaughan to be displayed on fake Web sites under his name. Vaughan eventually narrowly lost his re-election bid to Republican Tony Shipley.

After Vaughan filed his suit against the Ethics Commission, the agency agreed to hold a second meeting on his complaint.

Once again, the commission dismissed it.

The former representative said his brush with the old ethics agency was an unpleasant eye-opener.

“There were clearly some problems with the Ethics Commission,” Vaughan said. “My experience was that it didn’t really appear to be interested in the cases coming before them. It just didn’t.”

Now, Vaughan said, Tennessee lawmakers and residents can only hope the new Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance can “be more efficient and effective” than the old, independent ethics panel.

“But the jury is still out on that, believe me,” Vaughan said.

Former Tennessee attorney general Michael Cody, who co-chaired the state committee that eventually helped create the Ethics Commission, said the verdict on the commission’s death might just be this simple: It died of natural causes.

“Whenever there’s a scandal, there’s a lot of motivation among people and politicians to clean things up,” said Cody, now a Memphis lawyer. “But as time passes, the motivation sort of gets left behind. And before you know it, you have an opposite reaction like this (getting rid of the Ethics Commission).”

With a laugh, Cody adds, “The truth is, it’s like when people are watching the ocean waves. When the waves are high, the interest is high. But when the waves are down, the interest goes way down, too.”

News Channel 11 Connects reporter Nate Morabito contributed to this story
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