Are Legislators Legislating High Paying Jobs For Themselves?
April 22nd, 2008 by Maria EvansBlogger Jason Scott at DelawareLiberal.net has put partisan politics aside to employ the biggest smackdown of the season on fellow Democrat, Delaware Senator Harris McDowell:
It is McDowell’s most recent attempt to use is position to create a six figure job for himself upon his exit from “public†service. It is sponsored by McDowell, Copeland, & Hall-Long and co-sponsored by Blevins, Simpson, Schooley, and Lofink - all of whom need to have their heads examined for getting into bed with the brazenly corrupt Harris McDowell. READ MORE HEREÂ
But as Scott pointed out in a previous post, Senator McDowell has been smacked down by a fellow Democrat before, and for similar reasons:Â
Actually, one person did notice McDowell’s greedy machinations and that person did seem to mind. The story of that knowing and acting on the knowledge provides another layer to the sedimentary history of McDowell’s serial abuse of the public trust. In fact, it is a glittery and interesting layer of that dank history because Harris McDowell was rebuked for his greed and indiscretion in no uncertain terms. READ MORE HEREÂ
So who was that “one person?” It was none other than Governor Ruth Ann Minner. (Holy cow, alert the media).
The bottom line? It looks like some of Delaware’s so called “green” initiatives are being used to line some General ASSembly members’ pockets with green. That kind of law making can’t mean good things for the average Delawarean.
Maybe it’s time for some laws to come out of Dover that prohibit members of the General ASSembly from serving on any entity created by the General ASSembly. That way our Representatives and Senators can spend less time legislating their future careers, and more time figuring out how to run a state financially without having to pull text books out of the hands of children.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:12 pm
The “Ineligibility Clause” of section 14 of Article II of the State Constitution prohibits a legislator -during his present term of office - from being appointed to a State “office” that was created, or had its financial benefits increased, during that present term. This means that a sitting legislator cannot quit his legislative position and then take an “office” that either was created by the Gen. Assembly during his present term or had its benefits increased during that term. The disqualification lasts until the expiration of the legislator’s current term.
In addition, the “Incompatibility Clause” of section 14 of Article II bars a sitting legislator from concurrently holding any other State “office.” This bar applies whether the office is old or new and the disqualification lasts so long as the legislator either holds the office or sits as a legislator. It is a prohibition on dual office holding by a legislator which is concerned not only with corruption but also maintaining a separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government.
The difficult questions are: (1) whether a particular position is an “office” under these bans - does the position allow for the exercise of State sovereign function? and (2) how (and who) can enforce the bars?
I think it is also a very difficult question whether the General Assembly can by law add or “increase” disqualifications (either in terms of scope or length) to permanently bar an former legislator from any offices after his term has expired. The courts have been reluctant to allow the General Assembly to impose by statute additional “qualifications” on elected representatives beyond those set forth in the Constitution.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Bigger government leads inevitably to abuse such as this which is why I am almost always against government solutions, even when I agree that there is a problem to be solved.
At least with companies that get too big (and there are plenty of abuses of power there too) we have, in theory, government agencies to deal with that abuse. They do a horrible job of it though as the relatively unscathed Microsoft proves. Instead big government and big business get in bed together and spawn even more bad policy. You think a lot of institutions both public and private are not going to rake it in on green initiatives? I have a bridge to show you.
When is the last time that someone ran, and won on a platform of trimming waste in government as well as curtailing abuse of the system by business? Voters keep voting for more, more, more freebies. Maybe someone over at the liberal blog can enlighten us as to the plan for keeping the golden goose alive.
If you don’t deal with it now, you’ll have to deal with it when things start to fall apart and some nut-job takes over. No reason to believe that history has stopped repeating itself.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I have no problem with the government legislating itself smaller, or limiting itself through term limits, or ending their ability to use their positions to make money for themselves later.
But they’ll never do that. In fact, didn’t they pass legislating making a conflict of interest owning 1% of a publicly traded company, so you could own more than $10 million dollars worth of stock in DP&L and not have to recuse yourself from voting on legislation directly pertaining to DP&L. It was $5k.
That kind of stuff is twisted. We should want better government than that.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:01 am
Delawareans are stupid. They vote the same guys in over and over. Then those guys turn around and run our state into the gutter. It’s the same old story year after year. When will they ever grow up and vote for the right people and not just for their party or years in office. It’s running our state into the ground and running our country in the ground.