We need it, but it wouldn't have done any good?
Senator Gene Abdallah is on Keloland.com today making note that we need a code of ethics. Because it wouldn't have done a darn thing?
Someone tell me when this all starts making sense.
Republican Senator Gene Abdallah of Sioux Falls says, "We have to have a code of ethics like everybody else has a code of ethics, every other department or agency or business."Read it all here at KELOland.com. Um.. Er...
Senator Gene Abdallah is a member of the executive board. Monday the group is meeting to discuss the page program and other lawmaking issues. But just weeks after a former lawmaker was arrested, two legislative leaders have sent a letter to the board asking them to also appoint a committee to study a code of ethics.
Abdallah says, "But there's bi-partisan support for a code of ethics and we'll certainly look into it along with the entire page program."
And while Abdallah believes lawmakers need a code of ethics, he doesn't think a code would have stopped the allegations facing former House member Ted Klaudt.
Abdallah says, "What good would the code of ethics have done there. I mean a person doing those kinds of things knows they are going to go to the penitentary. They are certainly not going to be spooked off by a code of ethics, but we still I think need one."
Someone tell me when this all starts making sense.
Comments
I just hope the next legislative session doesn't devote a week or more to passing a code of ethics. I want them to address funding education and many other more pressing issues that will have some actual effect on our lives.
We already have the true Code of Ethics in the form of the Ten Commandments. You can see how well that is being followed in many cases! Just writing it down will not make bad people stop being bad people.
You could have a rule that any member indicted for a felony can't vote or looses committee positions. Don't they do that in DC? Because if Klaudt was still serving, he could continue to serve now in SD pending the outcome of his trial, correct?
Dang.
Shall try to write again but, theyare never the same.
By the way Gene is right!
Good luck getting any substantive ethics reform past these guys.
And the fact that the Speaker has now created a conflict of interest in any subsequent legislative investigation shows you how much these guys just don't get it.
Don't hold your breath on any true ethics reform. There will still be the lobbyist funded hosipitality suites, there will still be the free meals, free drinks, special favors done by the lobbyists, and the pages and interns will be oogled (and worse) by the legislators buying them drinks at the Longbranch.
And through all of it, people like Bob Gray will say it's not a problem.
Knudson sponsored the bill to create an ethics code and ethics committees this last session, along with legislative leaders Heidepriem, and Hargens and others. Conspicuously absent as a sponsor was House Republican leader Rhoden. Not only did Rhoden not sponsor the bill, he even voted to kill it in House State Affairs Committee when it was killed on a party line vote.
Where was Rhoden before the E-Board took a vote on summer studies at the April meeting? He wasn't urging it when it was actually time for the E-Board to decide what studies to do.
Funny how Rhoden has come around on this issue. More on Rhoden's spin tomorrow.