35 Former Lawmakers Endorsing Ethics Initiative
11.25.2009 by Elizabeth Ziegler
(KCPW News) Thirty-five former state lawmakers are now supporting an ethics initiative a citizen’s group is trying to get on the ballot in 2010. One of them, former Republican Representative and Utah Governor Olene Walker, said she is conflicted about being on the opposite side of the issue from the Utah GOP, which is against the initiative.
“This is an issue that I disagree with some of my close friends in the Legislature and in the Republican Party because we are on opposite sides of the ethic legislation question,” she said at the Capitol.
Walker says she lent her support to the initiative after watching similar proposals fail to pass out of the legislature for 30 years. She says Utahns deserve a higher standard for their elected representatives.
Lawmakers are already talking about making changes to the initiative if it’s approved by voters in 2010. Salt Lake City Democratic Representative Brian King supports the main concepts in the proposal, but has concerns about it as well. He says some technical changes could be made to the initiative by the legislature.
“I think that we would have to be true to the main planks of the ethics initiative,” King told KCPW. ” I think the only allowance we would have would be to polish off some of the rough edges of the initiative’s details in a way that would not be seen by the people of the state of Utah as violating the main provisions of that ethics initiative.”
King is concerned that the definitions for legislative ethics in the initiative are too broad, that a felony charge may be too harsh for violating the legislative code of conduct, and that the initiative’s conflict of interest section is too limiting for part-time lawmakers.
Thirty-five former state lawmakers are now supporting an ethics initiative a citizen’s group is trying to get on the ballot in 2010. One of them, former Republican Representative and Utah Governor Olene Walker, said she is conflicted about being on the opposite side of the issue from the Utah GOP, which is against the initiative.
25-UTAHNS 1 :14 “… the ethics legislation question.”
“This is an issue that I disagree with some of my close friends in the Legislature and in the Republican Party because we are on opposite sides of the ethics legislation question.”
Walker says she lent her support to the initiative after watching similar proposals fail to pass out of the legislature for 30 years. She says Utahns deserve a higher standard for their elected representatives.
Lawmakers are already talking about making changes to the initiative if it’s approved by voters in 2010. Salt Lake City Democratic Representative Brian King supports the main concepts in the proposal, but has concerns about it as well. He says some technical changes could be made to the initiative by the legislature.
25-UTAHNS 2 :20 “… of that ethics initiative.”
“I think that we would have to be true to the main planks of the ethics initiative. I think the only allowance we would have would be to polish off some of the rough edges of the initiative’s details in a way that would not be seen by the people of the state of Utah as violating the main provisions of that ethics initiative.”
King is concerned that the definitions for legislative ethics in the initiative are too broad, that a felony charge may be too harsh for violating the legislative code of conduct, and that the initiative’s conflict of interest section is too limiting for part-time lawmakers.
