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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
You can’t teach old pols
new ethicsIt's a little scary to know that some state legislators think a law is needed that would require top state officials to take a two-hour course on ethics.
Cynics would argue that anyone who has risen to such lofty levels as a state senator, department head or governor completely understands the concept of ethics and long ago decided it just wasn't for them.
Presumably someone who has been elected to high office enjoys a background that includes kindergarten, elementary school, high school and college. If they didn't become acquainted with "ethics" during decades of academic, social and personal instruction, I doubt that a two-hour course in the subject at this point in their life would take. It's something like asking a sky diver who has jumped out of an airplane a few hundred times to take a two-hour course on gravity.
The thing about ethics is that everyone knows what it is, but some people choose not to incorporate it into their daily lives. Why? Because it's easier to consolidate power, make a quick buck, help your friends, hurt your enemies and generally engage in bad behavior that provides immediate gratification without a bunch of pesky morals and ethics getting in your way.
SO, IF OUR elected officials actually know what ethics is, why is this curious bill knocking around the Capitol? Speaking as an outsider, it seems to me to have been nothing more than a Democratic political gambit to embarrass Gov. Linda Lingle for letting a private lobby group work out of her office during the development of public school reform legislation.
She shouldn't have done it. Lobbyists shouldn't nest in elected officials' offices. But let's be honest, the Capitol has been nothing but a big old roost for lobbyists forever. There are so many lobbyists swooping around that building it's like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."
What the Democrats forgot when they began pushing this strange piece of legislation is that Republicans haven't been in power long enough to really do a lot of unethical things. They need more time.
On the other hand, as Sen. Fred Hemmings attempted to point out during a recent hearing, Hawaii Democrats have a rich and glorious history of ethics misadventure.
Hemmings attempted to remind his fellow senators about the contretemps of such ethically challenged Democrats as Rene Mansho, Andy Mirikitani, Jon Yoshimura and Nathan Suzuki. He wanted them to recall, for instance, that Suzuki was convicted of using his own Capitol office to conduct an offshore tax fraud scheme, but Hemmings was gaveled to silence by Senate President Robert Bunda.
It was one of those "whoopsie!" moments when you have to believe that more than a few politicos there decided maybe making a big deal out of ethics training wasn't such a great idea. No one at that hearing truly believes a two-hour ethics class would have kept Suzuki from committing federal tax fraud.
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Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com