Don’t cap penalty for violating ethics, campaign laws

SENATORS WILL decide this week whether they want people to obey the State Ethics Act.

That ought to be an easy call.

But apparently it’s not. After nearly two months of ignoring a House bill that would reduce compliance, senators suddenly revived it last week and nearly passed it in a mad dash of activity on Thursday. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the vote was delayed until at least today.

The bill would cap the fines for individuals who refuse to file quarterly campaign finance reports and annual economic interest statements. Such fines are an essential part of keeping legislators and other state and local officials accountable. The campaign reports can show voters to whom representatives may be indebted, and prompt demands for explanations when votes seem to reflect the interest of campaign contributors rather than the public at large. The economic interest statements, which must be filed by appointed officials and many government employees as well as elected officials, list personal relationships and business dealings that could interfere with officials’ judgment or call their objectivity into question.

The idea of capping the fines emerged last year, after news reports that unpaid fines had climbed to more than $1 million since 2003. That’s when the law was changed to increase the fines by $100 a day until the reports are finally filed. The argument for the change has been dolled up to make it sound respectable, but at its tawdry heart it’s this: A few people refuse to obey the law, so we should reduce the punishment.

We’re still waiting for someone to explain how that kind of thinking makes any sense — unless you’re trying to cut down on prison costs. Imagine how quickly we could clear out our jails if we applied that logic to the criminal laws. Of course, we’d end up with even more people out there breaking the law — which is precisely what will happen if the Legislature slaps a $5,000 cap on the fines for ethics law violations.

The reason the Legislature decided to remove the old $600 cap and increase the fines daily was that too many people were ignoring the law because the fine was so low. What we find, three years later, is that the law seems to be serving its intended purpose. More than 13,000 people are required to file those reports, and as of last week there was a grand total of 147 on the State Ethics Committee’s Debtor’s Page. That’s a compliance rate of 99 percent.

It’s probably true that a lot of people on that list got caught unaware when the law was changed. It’s also probably true that some people figure there’s no sense in going back and filing their overdue reports now because they know they can’t afford to pay the fine.

Although public officials have an even greater responsibility than the rest of us to know and follow the law, under the circumstances it would not be unreasonable to reduce or even forgive the fines that are currently owed.

But there’s simply no reason to set a limit on how high the fines can go for people who insist on breaking the law in the future. That is, unless the whole point is to encourage people to keep the public in the dark about whom their government is working for.