Senate Rejects Key Amendments to Ethics Bill
Senate Minority Amendments Fail on Senate Floor

Juneau – Ethics legislation passed by the Alaska Senate today continues to allow a state official convicted of certain felonies to receive a state pension because of the failure of an amendment offered by the five members of the Senate Republican Caucus.

“Passage of this legislation was a good step, but only a half step,” Therriault said. “We should be working on a comprehensive package similar to that under consideration in the House of Representatives.  By passing separate bills we run the risk of leaving out key pieces because we don’t have the full picture before us.”

“While we appreciate support for the amendments that passed, these two bills would have imposed stricter requirements and been much more comprehensive if all the amendments had been adopted,” said Sen. Con Bunde, R-Anchorage.

The Caucus offered an amendment to both the executive branch ethics bill, SB 19, and the legislative ethics bill, SB 20, that would have required public officials to surrender their pension if convicted of a federal or state felony crime of bribery, receiving a bribe, perjury, subornation of perjury, scheme to defraud, or fraud in connection with official duties. It would have affected benefits accrued on or after the date of the crime.

The forfeiture amendments failed by a vote of 5 “yes” to 11 “no,” with all five members of the Senate Republican Caucus voting yes.

Some senators who voted against the amendments on the floor argued that it would be more appropriate to consider them in committee. However, several of the amendments were sponsored at the request of the Palin Administration, which felt the ideas had not received a fair hearing by the Senate Majority Coalition.

“When you have the Governor asking for more disclosure and transparency from those who work in the administration, I am not sure why we would turn these amendments down,” Therriault said. “These amendments had the full support of the Governor.”

Amendments requested by the Palin Administration that were rejected on the floor would have required electronic filing of campaign and financial disclosures with the Alaska Public Offices Commission; lowered the threshold and required more detailed financial disclosures from public officials, including number of hours and services performed to earn income; prohibited gifts from lobbyists to members of the executive branch except when there is clearly no intent to influence the performance of official duties; and expanded the list of boards and commissions for which officers are required to file financial disclosures.

The Senate did approve Senate Minority amendments to require former public officials to file financial disclosures for their last periods of public service, and to treat deferred income the same as received income in financial disclosures.

Despite the failure of the amendments on the Senate floor, Therriault indicated that the Senate Republican Caucus intends to work in a constructive fashion to get the language encompassed in the amendments passed this year.

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A sound actuality by Sen. Gene Therriault can be downloaded from the following link:
http://www.aksenateminority.com/media/25/therriault2007030501a.mp3