Hartford Hammers Out Ethical Reform

This year, Connecticut’s elected officials in Hartford are shocked… shocked… by the ethical lapses of such recent note in the halls of their hallowed capitol. They have spent a good amount of time and energy in recent weeks agonizing over how such a thing could have happened and how they can rescue the state from recurring corruption. The competing proposals for ethics reform that have arisen from this great consternation have brought to mind the wry observation of the cowboy humorist Will Rogers at another convening of lawmakers: people have come to feel the same when the legislature is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Everyone has an ethics plan now. Gov Rell and the Republican minorities in the state House and Senate have one. The Democratic majority leaders have one. Even the Secretary of the State has one (she’s running for governor in 2006). Of all the various reform plans, only the proposals by the governor, M. Jodi Rell, acknowledge that maybe unbridled corruption is not a crisis in the smaller towns of the state. Her reform proposals give local communities some flexibility to establish ethical codes of conduct that best serve their citizens.

The Democrats’ insistence on a uniform code of ethics for all towns and cities in the state would apply the same set of safeguards on Bridgeport and Bridgewater. The ethical prescriptions of the Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate would impose on smaller towns like Newtown a particularly onerous requirement that would poison the long tradition of citizen volunteer service on local boards and commissions: full disclosure of the personal finances of volunteer public officials.

Newtown’s political parties have a hard enough time coming up with candidates for local office as it is. The work of most town boards is time-consuming, complicated, and thankless. In recent years fewer volunteers have been coming forward to take on all the aggravation. Add to the late-night meetings and phone calls at home public perusal of personal income and household finances of volunteer public servants, and Newtown may have to shut down the Planning and Zoning Commission, or the Parks and Recreation Commission, or the Water Pollution Control Authority.

Just because the Democratic power brokers in Hartford, Waterbury, and Bridgeport are feeling the heat over the corruption emanating from urban areas is no reason to go tinkering with the way smaller towns with long records of honesty and integrity go about governing themselves. Newtown has its own Code of Ethics, its own Board of Ethics, and its own tradition of ethical conduct. We hope good sense prevails, and Hartford puts down the hammer and does not try to “reform” local communities right out of business.