Friday, June 1st, 2007...6:42 pm
Greg Patterson Showers Nude
Greg Patterson’s latest crusade against Arizona’s Fourth Estate is posted on his blog. In it, he takes issue with an article in the East Valley Tribune about a possible conflict of interest regarding Steve Yarbrough’s advocacy of laws that may, the article alleges, raise his own salary.
Patterson’s argument is that we have a citizen’s legislature, and that such conflicts of interest are inevitable in our system. But, state law recognizes some things as over the line. For example, a person who works for the State of Arizona (except for a teacher) cannot be in the legislature. There also was a time when individual legislators would declare conflicts (I don’t know if they were still doing this when Patterson was there).
I think Patterson’s argument comparing the Yarbrough situation with those Democratic members who make their living in the social service field falls apart because this field is rather broad, and each member is only involved in a small part of it. A change in statute may or may not effect their income since there are so many other actors involved (especially since these groups now seem to have an one-for-all strategy when they lobby). In Yarbrough’s case, he runs a non-profit in a very narrow industry, and his business represents a large chunk of that sector. It is harder for him to plausibly argue that his work is about a broader public interest, especially with the monomania he has displayed in pushing this issue.
But leave aside that for a minute, let’s go back to his argument that this is just the natural course of things at the legislature. Such conflicts are inevitable, and even to some extent welcome, since they are a consequence of the expertise that an individual would bring to the body. Okay, lets give you that one. But, for a system like this to function, wouldn’t voters need to be fully informed about which set of conflicts of interest they are electing to office?
It seems to me that this article is fulfilling that function, informing voters about who they have elected and what goes into their decision making process. If the voters want to keep electing Yarbrough despite his conflicts, then they should re-elect him after they are fully informed of his biases. If Yarbrough doesn’t want his public record scrutinized in this way, he ought to find other work.
6 Comments
June 1st, 2007 at 7:29 pm
So did Hitler.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:09 am
It is completely inappropriate for office holders to get rich off of their office. What is ironic is that the same office holders make it illegal for other government officials to accept gifts above a certain dollar figure (usually $15 or 20). My former students who work for the city or the courts do not often even accept a cheap mug for speaking in a class. Why? Because they want to avoid ANY appearance of inpropriety.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:30 pm
My point is that the article singled out Yarbrough and admited that he doesn’t have a conflict, but made it sound like he is the only one who votes on issues that can affect his employment. If the Tribune’s point was that in a citizen Legislature, people vote on stuff that also affects their employment, that would be fine. There would be dozens of examples. But writing the entire article and only mentioning Yarbrough is not appropriate.
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:19 pm
The point should be made differently. Yarbrough is –NOT– an example of a “citizen legislator.” Rather he is a defining example of a “lobbyist legislator.” His “day job” is to promote Christian charter schools, which means he promotes his organization’s agenda and goals to anyone who will listen. He has taken his role as committee chairs and “lobbyist legislator” to promote those same goals in Bills that provide funding to those groups he lobbies in his day job. He is feeding at the public trough both as a legislator and as the executive director of a Christian School lobby. If that isn’t a plain and obvious conflict of interest, what is?
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:19 pm
I’d like to repeat a point I made on Greg’s blog.
As long as we have legislative salaries of $24,000 a year, we’ll only get legislators who are rich, who are retired and drawing pensions, or who have spouses who can pay most of the bills.
I’ve known legislators who lived in squalor. I know legislators who made aggregious mistakes out of desperation because they were in financial trouble. I know of one legislator who eats chips and salsa when people go out and pretends not to be hungry.
We expect legislators to be in session for six months out of the year, and to spend the other six months dealing with constituent demands, and finding some way to make a buck to subsidize their political addictions.
Until we pay legislators a decent salary we’re asking for trouble, and we’re asking good people to make a big sacrifice.
And yes, as someone noted above, we’ll get people who think it’s perfectly fine to draw salaries that are subsidized by the votes they cast - and they’ll claim it isn’t a conflict of interest because they’re sharing the spoils with other people.
Let’s pay a living wage to legislators, and let’s ban outside employment.
June 4th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
There’s a part of me that says “you get what you pay for,” but there’s another part of me that says “if you want a raise, earn it.” These guys can’t even get a budget done. About the only thing this group has earned is our scorn.
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