Trying to Blunt the Impact of "Special-interest solons"

I thought it worth noting the item "Special-interest solons" from today's Political Scene column in the ProJo:

[Rep. Douglas W.] Gablinske [D-Bristol]...recently asked the state Ethics Commission to address this question: “how full-time union employees, who are also legislators, are able to promote union interests through legislation.”

In a letter to the commission, Gablinske said the answer the commission’s staff lawyer Jason Gramitt gave lawmakers at an ethics refresher course last month at the State House “was less than satisfactory to me.” (Gramitt’s answer at the time: “If they are just employees or there’s a class-exception that applies, the code as it is currently written in most cases will allow that kind of action.”)

In his letter, Gablinske said: “It’s quite one thing for a mason or carpenter who happens to belong to a union and is also a legislator to be ‘class exempted’ when dealing with union/legislative conflicts; however, it is quite another when the sole purpose of the legislator is to promote ‘union legislative interests’ over the ‘general interest of the taxpayers.’ ”

While both the Ethics Commission and the General Assembly have the power to tighten the code, “for objective reasons, I think it best the commission deals with it,” he wrote.

Democrat Gablinske is raising a variation on a question Republican Governor Carcieri posed in a Sept. 20, 2006, letter to the commission. Carcieri suggested the adoption of clear ban on voting by a legislator “on any measure that affects a business or industry from which the legislator (or a member of his or her immediate family or business associates) receives more than a minimal amount of his or her income.”

Carcieri did not focus on union employees alone. In his letter to the commission, he wrote: “Every year, paid union representatives vote on legislation — including the state budget — that directly impacts their employers. Criminal attorneys vote on changes to the criminal code. And insurance brokers vote on bills that would change how we regulate the insurance industry. Voting on a bill that directly impacts the person or business that is signing your paycheck is an obvious conflict of interest.”

Gramitt late last week said he would give copies of Gablinske’s letter to the Ethics Commission members at their next meeting later this month and “they can decide whether they want to throw it into the hopper with the other things they are discussing regulation-wise …”