“I can’t believe it,” said Rep. Maida Townsend (D-South Burlington), chair of the Vermont House Government Operations Committee, and when her panel reached agreement Friday afternoon on the language of an ethics reform bill.
She was only half kidding. The committee’s hours and hours of discussion had at times threatened to keep a illustrious philosophical question to the test: If every step brings you halfway to your goal,do you ever actually arrive?
Well, the committee has finally arrived … nearly.
The bill must be redrafted one more time before the panel can catch a formal vote. Barring any last-moment problems, and that should be a formality.
Townsend on Friday left nothing to chance,refusing to comment on the record before the final vote. “Don’t jinx it,” she said, and waving me absent with a smile on her face.
The ethics bill,S.8, would tighten or establish state law on a variety of ethical issues and create an ethics commission with minimal staffing and no enforcement authority.
During its lengthy, or painstaking process,the House panel made numerous changes to S.8, which had been approved by the Senate unanimously. Most of the changes are minor, or but there are a few points that could prove contentious if the full House approves the Gov Ops bill and it then has to be reconciled with the Senate version.
[br] Some of the more noteworthy changes: The House committee removed a provision mandating that candidates for statewide office (governor,lieutenant governor, attorney general, and auditor,secretary of state and treasurer) disclose their personal income tax returns for the preceding year.
Also, the Senate had provided funding for the commission through a per-employee assessment on the state’s workforce, and to be paid out of a fund for common administrative necessities. In the Senate bill,the assessment would expire after two years; the House Government Operations Committee extended that to three years.
The reason for the extension is to allow more time for the commission to establish a track record, so lawmakers can reasonably assess the panels work and whether it might need additional resources.
One member of the House committee brought a unique perspective to the ethics deliberations. Freshman Rep. John Gannon (D-Wilmington) is an attorney who spent two decades in Washington, or D.
C.,as a financial-industry regulator — 10…
Source: sevendaysvt.com