By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
June 25, 2019
I’ve long believed that most legislators, like most people, try to do mostly the right thing most of the time.
I still believe it, but it’s becoming harder to make that argument – particularly this week after former Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, the governor’s nephew, decided to plead guilty to federal corruption charges in Arkansas and Missouri.
Hutchinson had pleaded innocent to corruption charges over the past nine months, but he ended his fight after federal prosecutors filed a new bribery charge Monday saying he accepted $157,000 to try to change state law in order to allow orthodontists to practice dentistry. With the walls closing in, he pleaded guilty to three charges with a maximum sentence of 13 years.
Hutchinson becomes the sixth recent legislator to plead guilty or be convicted of corruption charges. In addition, a current legislator, Rep. Mickey Gates R-Hot Springs, was arrested after being accused of not paying taxes, and not filing state tax returns from 2003-17. He didn’t deny not paying taxes but said he was working through the problem, and he’s still in office. In fact, last year he was re-elected.
We can expect Hutchinson will be giving authorities whatever information he can to reduce his sentence. In fact, his information helped lead to an 18-year sentence for former Sen. Jon Woods, R-Springdale. In other words, we probably haven’t seen the last indictment, and maybe not the last indictment of a legislator.
Have I been wrong about “most” legislators? There are 135 serving at any one time and even more over a period of several sessions, so six convictions is still a relatively small percentage. You can be a decent person and still make a series of escalating bad choices in one area of your life, leading to a justly deserved prison term.
Still, we’re moving past the “few bad apples” stage in this ongoing saga. One legislator has told me 30% of lawmakers in his or her particular chamber would do the right thing regardless, 20% are corrupt, and 50% “are basically good people but can be swayed under pressure.”
Scandals have been part of American democracy since its beginning, so let’s not use this latest round as evidence that we must make America great again. In fact, maybe things have improved because there are more people looking into politicians’ activities, and more ways for them to look.
One thing that hasn’t changed: Elected officials don’t make much money at the same time they’re surrounded by lots of it, both taxpayers’ and political donors’. That means they face both temptation and opportunity while swimming in a swirl of gray areas. If someone gives a politician money directly in order to influence him or her on public policy, that’s a bribe. If someone gives a politician a campaign donation in order to influence him or her on public policy, that’s freedom of speech, under the law. There’s definitely a legal difference and there’s an ethical one as well, but money has still changed hands in order to achieve a desired result.
Meanwhile, legislators are real people with real experiences in the real world, which is desirable. But even the most ethical have conflicts of interest. Insurance agents vote on bills pertaining to insurance, and retired teachers vote on bills regarding the teacher retirement system. They could recuse, but they’d have to do so often, and if they did, their constituents would not have a vote on that issue. They can disclose, and under new rules are required to. But disclosure doesn’t really mean so much in practice.
There are no unconflicted lawmakers, and while the lines between legal and illegal are bright enough, the lines between right and wrong are blurry. Sometimes, we’re left with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s description of pornography in a 1964 case: “I know it when I see it.”
Personally pocketing $157,000 to change a law – that’s a bright red line anyone should be able to see.
Other situations are grayer, so at times we’ll have to depend on most legislators either being unswayable, or at least knowing they can be swayed, and choosing not to be.