Richard WarnickRep. Greg Hughes - Conduct Unbecoming
All politics is local, and when Lisa Johnson came to my door asking for help in her campaign for the Utah House of Representatives I resolved to do my due diligence this year. Today I walked a precinct in Sandy for Lisa, who is just the kind of representative you want in the state legislature– smart, determined and honest, willing to listen to her constituents. She fought hard and successfully to save our public schools from the voucher privatization plan. She strongly believes in open government.
There is an incredible contrast to the dishonesty of our incumbent District 51 Rep. Greg Hughes. For years, he has ignored the people he’s supposed to represent in order to serve the powerful GOP politicians at the State Capitol.
In an ethics complaint filed last month by Rep. Phil Riesen and two other Democrats, Hughes was accused of attempting to bribe a former lawmaker to support school vouchers, of strong-arming lobbyists into backing the voucher movement, of threatening would-be political foes, and of pressuring lobbyists not to support a GOP voucher opponent.
On October 17, the House Ethics Committee (equally divided between Democrats and Republicans) found him guilty of conduct unbecoming a state legislator but did not vote for censure. The week-long closed-door investigation ended in a stalemate when Republicans voted lockstep to dismiss every charge.
Now, of course, Rep. Hughes is sending out mailers decrying the ethics charges as “bogus.” That’s not what the committee said (emphasis added):
We do find that some of Representative Hughes’s conduct as presented to us during this inquiry was unbecoming a Member of the Utah House of Representatives. We request that Representative Hughes take steps to change his behavior and to make appropriate apologies to those who may have been affected.
The Ethics Committee also concluded that the Code of Official Conduct is inadequate to address the level of wrongdoing that’s rampant in our legislature, with Republicans arguing that bribery is “ethical” under the existing rules.
The solution is simple. Let’s elect legislators who will behave honestly, and write a new Code of Official Conduct that’s not full of loopholes. We all know that simply complaining about bad legislators doesn’t work– you have to vote them out of office.
More info: Lisa Johnson for Utah State House of Representatives.
UPDATE: On The Utah Amicus, attorneys David Irvine and Alan Smith have a great post explaining what happened in the Ethics Committee (emphasis added):
[T]he Democratic half of the committee membership found that there was clear and convincing evidence that Hughes was guilty of one count of bribery and two counts of extortion…
Hughes now claims that he was vindicated … it more likely reveals, once again, that his moral compass has a hard time finding true north. He stubbornly refuses to take responsibility for his own misconduct, blaming those who merely report his wrongdoing.
November 1st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Lisa is absolutely GREAT! Few people of her caliber ’show up’ willing to swim in the shark infested waters of Utah political cronyism.
If she is not elected, it will be an terrible loss for Utah and the people of her district.