Alaska House agrees with Senate on rolling back Legislative ethics law
JUNEAU — The Alaska House voted 33-4 Monday to roll back conflict-of-interest rules it imposed on itself last year. The vote follows complaints from lawmakers who said an interpretation of last year’s legislation made it impossible to speak with constituents about particular issues.
Rep. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage, spoke on the House floor to say the rollback was in front of legislators “in large measure, I believe, because of an advisory opinion from the House Special Committee on Legislative Ethics that found that the passage of House Bill 44 last year created situations in which, where a legislator has a substantial financial interest in a particular matter, that that legislator can’t actually communicate — not only with their constituents, but with other members of the body, except in open committee meetings and on the floor.”
Senate Bill 89, proposed by Sen. John Coghill, R-North Pole, would fix that problem by rolling back most of the components of HB 44, including clauses that extended conflicts of interest to members of legislators’ immediate family. Under existing law, if they are financially conflicted, so is the lawmaker.
SB 89 eliminates a requirement that lawmakers declare a conflict if they or an immediate family member received more than $10,000 in income from someone affected by a particular piece of legislation.
Read more: https://www.adn.com/politics/alaska-legislature/2019/04/09/alaska-house-agrees-with-senate-on-rolling-back-legislative-ethics-law/
