Voters demand improved ethics

But officials continue to get away with hijinks,

Usually, it’s the Legislature that spits on the average voter.

Next week, however, those in charge are changing it up so that the Florida Commission on Ethics gets a rare opportunity to take a whack at you, too.

In November 2018, 79% of voters said they want to tighten up ethics in a state that has ranked among the most corrupt in America since 2000.

Amendment 12, written by former state Senate President Don Gaetz, prohibits public officials currently in office from lobbying their colleagues — doesn’t it seem as if that should be a given? — and goes on to say they can’t lobby for six years after leaving office.

Then, the amendment threw a curve: It prohibits elected officials from using their office to obtain a “disproportionate benefit.”

That seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? It basically says that if a UCF student working in a pizza joint at night and scrimping to buy a half-tank of gas can’t get some sweet little legislative goodie, then neither can elected types.

But, no. Leave it to lawyers to torture that phrase with car batteries and clamps until it gives up the ghost.

After an amendment is approved, some branch of government has to write rules about how it will be enforced, etc. This time, the job fell to the Florida Commission on Ethics, an agency that typically interprets current ethics rules very narrowly. The result is elected officials get away with hijinks for which the rest of us want to hang them.

Amendment 12 author Gaetz wrote in a letter to the editor published in April in the South Florida Sun Sentinel: “This law could be the Swiss army knife of ethics enforcement. It’s a defining moment to go bold or go easy. I don’t expect the Ethics Commission will get another chance like this for a very long time.”

That would be polite understatement.

Amendment 12 created this pivotal point: Either members do what the people of Florida ordered them to do or they cave to the state’s biggest power brokers.

It comes to a head at 9 a.m. July 26 in Tallahassee, where the Ethics Commission is to meet.

The commission was poised last month to take a recommendation from its staff on what “disproportionate benefit” means when naysayers jumped in to declare that the whole thing is far too complex and the state should just interpret the amendment as falling under rules that already exist about taking gifts.

In other words, do nothing. Never mind that voters demanded the state tighten things up.

Everyone from the Florida League of Cities and the Florida Association of Counties to the sheriffs association to the folks

who run community development districts is trying to convince the commission that this amendment is far, far too complicated to put into service.

“They’re getting pushback from these various groups — they’re trying to protect their members,” said Ben Wilcox, research director of Integrity Florida, an ethics watchdog group. “They’re trying to basically sabotage the work the Commission on

ethics has done.

“They just need to pass the rule. The Constitutional amendment requires them to do this. It’s time to step up and do what the people of Florida have asked them to do — raise the ethical bar.”

Commission staffers have proposed to define disproportionate benefit as “a benefit, privilege, exemption or result not available to similarly situated persons.”

To be found in violation, the elected official would have to have “acted or refrained from acting” with a “wrongful intent”

and for the purpose of getting that delightful little benefit that “is inconsistent with the proper performance of his or her public duties.”

The opposition is rolling in freaked-out mode. They have been whining and raising preposterous possible scenarios to persuade commission members to do nothing. They claim that nobody will want to serve on the wide variety of elected boards affected by the new amendment if stricter standards are adopted.

And right there, folks, is the best reason to do it.

Plenty of people would serve on such boards — just not the usual stooges who want to lap up the power structure’s scraps for their services and not the ones who want to build their political influence, especially with developers in communities with development districts.

The best example is the main government that runs The Villages massive retirement community, whose owners fill the board with employees and “affiliates” to be certain that no other opinion is entertained and no other interest competes with the developer’s.

Care to weigh in on the issue? To submit an email backing up your vote, drop a note to senior lawyer Grayden Schafer at Schafer.Grayden@leg.state.fl.us. To read the comments of your local governments, go to ethics.state.fl.us and click “submitted materials and comments about the rulemaking.”

Regular old citizens have just as big a stake in this as government.