Can trust be restored?

Lawmakers urged to embrace higher ethical behaviors

They’re just words. Important words, to be sure.

Senate President Pro Tem Jim Hendren, a senator from Sulphur Springs near Gravette, opened the Arkansas General Assembly’s regular legislative session Monday with a call to lawmakers and others influencing state government to behave themselves.

It might be galling to the straight arrows among lawmakers that their insti- tutional higher-ups feel a need to lecture them about legal or ethical lines and admonishing them to resist crossing them. But as an institution, the General Assembly clearly needs leaders who will set a higher standard, an expectation of conduct conducive to transparency in government and respectful of the responsibility given over by the voters back home.

Let no one underestimate what those voters have done. By electing these 135 members of the House and Senate, they have laid their trust upon them along with their hopes that legislators will use their time in the state’s hallowed institutions wisely, effectively and, above all, with integrity.

Men and women in those chambers needed to hear, and take to heart, what Hendren had to say. And, he said, his words needed to echo beyond the Senate and House chambers where opening festivities were taking place.

“Lobbyists, business interests, organizations and others that have a vital role to play in our process, you all know they can be held accountable for unethical behavior as well,” Hendren said after Supreme Court Justice Dan Kemp swore him in.

Hendren, as one would expect, stood up for his colleagues, calling the notion that the “Legislature is a wholly corrupt institution run by corrupt, evil people” a lie. But he clearly recognized a need to address Arkansas’ latest period of political corruption as reflected by two years of federal investigations, indictments and convictions of lawmakers, lobbyists and business people engaged in bilking taxpayers.

So much of it, sadly, started right here in Northwest Arkansas. It has been two years since revelations that a former Springdale lawmaker, Micah Neal, entered a guilty plea related to accepting a kickback for funneling state tax dollars to Springdale’s private Christian school, Ecclesia College. There was also the trail and conviction of state Sen. Jon Woods, also of Springdale. He got 18 years in federal prison for his role in arranging or accepting kickbacks.

Jake Files, former senator of Fort Smith, reported last year to a federal prison to serve 18 months on wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering charges related to his misuse of taxpayer dollars in his private business.

Hank Wilkins of Pine Bluff and Eddie Cooper of Melbourne, former lawmakers, entered guilty pleas on public corruption charges as well.

Just last week, former state Sen. Gilbert Baker of Conway was indicted by a federal grand jury on corruption charges.

Hendren urged his colleagues to begin the session with a determination that “the culture of greed and corruption is over.”

“We will not participate in it. We will not ignore it, and we will not tolerate those who do,” he said.

Hendren no doubt recalls his own brush with Woods. In court documents and an interview last fall, Hendren said Woods in a 2011 meeting sought a bribe of $10,000 or more to stay out of the way of Hendren’s 2012 state Senate bid in the event redistricting placed the two men in the same district. Hendren’s decision was to tell a local prosecutor about it after telling Woods “he did not do business that way,” the court documents said.

Woods has denied the approach, his attorney said last year. Hendren demonstrated integrity with his refusal, but said he decided to “run my race” and not pursue the Woods matter further when authorities asked if he was willing to wear a recording device to document Wood’s alleged offer.

“The thing that stuck this indelibly in my mind was when [Woods] said, ‘this is the way it’s done,’ that this sort of thing happens in politics all the time. That is the culture we have to change,” Hendren recalled last September.

Changing culture very well might require going the extra mile to ferret out and prosecute those who would enrich themselves through the power of elective office. “No tolerance” is a very high bar, one we believe all lawmakers should embrace. Hendren’s words Monday reflected that even if his follow-through in 2011 fell short.

Are there more indictments, guilty pleas or convictions to come? It would not be a surprise. Hendren, and Speaker of the House Matthew Shepherd of El Dorado, devoted themselves on Day One of the legislative session to calling for integrity in public service.

“Unfortunately, the work the Legislature is charged with doing has been overshadowed for several years by mistakes, misdeeds, corruption and even illegal actions by a small … group of our former colleagues,” Hendren said. “These activities were actions of greed, dishonesty and selfishness. The behavior was a betrayal of their duty to their constituents, a betrayal to their oath of office, and a betrayal to their colleagues and the institution of the Arkansas Senate.

“While we cannot change the events that occurred, we can learn from them and we can certainly control the events that happen during the year forward,” he said.

Yes, these are important words. But they are just words, appropriate for inaugurating a new legislation session. What matters now is how those involved in state government apply them in small decisions as well as major ones. The call for integrity applies not just to criminal acts, but transparency in the political process — a lack of secrecy about who is pushing certain legislation and why or a resistance to creating more exemptions in open government laws. It is, after all, in secrecy that the seeds of political corruption can be planted and nurtured.

Lawmakers can tighten down the ethical rules by which they and other influencers working to affect public policy should operate.

Speeches are a great start, giving voice to the urgency to act and to change attitudes at the state Capitol and throughout government. What will matter a great deal more are the changes lawmakers can and should make to ensure ethical and legal violations are met with serious repercussions.

The culture won’t change because Hendren or anyone else says it should. For that to happen requires ethical behavior day in and day out, in big and small matters, in the service to the people of Arkansas.