Gov. Bill Richardson’s reconvened ethics task force met for the first time on Tuesday and came up with familiar topics and new issues to discuss in the coming months.
The group’s members decided to examine several issues as they consider what reform proposals to suggest to the governor: campaign finance reform, public financing of campaigns, opening conference committees, creating ethics and election commissions and paying legislators.
Last year’s task force tackled campaign finance reform, public financing, the ethics commission and paying lawmakers, but didn’t take up conference committees or an election commission, so those add a new dimension to the debate.
The proposal to open conference committees is an annual battle that came within one Senate vote of approval this year. Conference committees are the secret meetings at which members of the House and Senate reconcile differing versions of bills and, sometimes, appropriate money or make other decisions that haven’t been vetted publicly.
It’s wonderful that the task force is taking on this issue.
An election commission is also an interesting idea. A number of states have such commissions run various aspects of elections or enforce elections law. I’ll be curious to see how this discussion goes.
The proposal to pay lawmakers, which I said last year was a good one, encountered stiff resistance and ended up not being proposed by the task force, which instead recommended creating expense accounts for lawmakers that critics said amounted to incumbent protection.
The task force will also decide whether to recommend to the governor a special session later this year to deal with ethics reform. Its members will discuss the issue with legislative leaders to determine whether such a session would accomplish anything.
I wasn’t at the meeting, but received reports from a couple of people who were.
The task force will next meet on June 27 in
Update, 9:25 p.m.
I’m told the task force will also look at issues related to the procurement code and government transparency.