Proposal would overhaul state ethics laws after scandals

Indiana legislators would face more financial disclosure requirements and elected officials would be expressly prohibited from using state resources for political purposes under a proposed overhaul of ethics laws introduced Thursday.

The bill follows an investigation into former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett's use of state staff and resources during his 2012 re-election campaign and a review of a senior lawmaker's private lobbying last year to kill legislation that could have cost his family's nursing home business millions of dollars.

Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma said the bill was aimed at improving transparency and limiting lawmakers' and state officials' conflict of interests.

"We are worried about the reality of whether people trust their government — and that's our goal," Bosma said.

The proposal would tighten the rules on waivers for the state's one-year "cooling off" period for state agency officials taking private-sector jobs that would deal with their former departments. It also broadens the personal financial disclosures of lawmakers and requires them to list any close relatives who are lobbyists. Another provision calls for the creation of a legislative ethics officer to advise lawmakers on ethical questions.

House Minority Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, is co-sponsoring the ethics bill with Bosma, who said the Senate's Republican and Democratic leaders planned to sponsor it in that chamber.

Pelath said the bill provided "some common-sense steps in helping us improve the expectations we have of ourselves."

The State Ethics Commission last year fined Bennett $5,000 for breaking ethics rules by using state resources to conduct campaign work.

A state inspector general's public report found minimal violations by Bennett and his staff and said those could easily have been avoided by rewriting department policy to allow for campaigning. But The Associated Press reported in December that a separate report detailed extensive use of staff and Bennett's state-issued SUV for political work. The inspector general's investigator suggested Bennett could face federal wire fraud charges and state ghost-employment charges.

Bennett, a Republican, has not been charged with any criminal violations and has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The measure introduced Thursday would bar any elected official or employee from using state money, facilities or personnel for political purposes.

Bosma said the House would take up separate proposed changes to its ethics rules next week, which would take effect before the proposed July effective date for law changes included in the bill.

"You can't put on paper the resolution of every situation," he said. "We expect folks to conduct themselves here with the highest ethical standards, they generally do."

The proposed tightening of disclosure requirements follows December's resignation of former Republican House Speaker Pro Tem Eric Turner, who was the subject of an ethics investigation after he privately lobbied lawmakers to kill a proposed ban on nursing home construction that could have hurt his family's business.

The House Ethics Committee determined Turner didn't technically violate House ethics rules barring lawmakers from using the office for their own self-interest.

In another ethics case, the state Department of Transportation bought land owned by the family of then-agency chief of staff Troy Woodruff, but the state inspector general determined that Woodruff walked "right up to the line" of breaking the law and should have recused himself.