Maybe this is what Massachusetts needs

Sen. Gerald Dial creates pledge against lobbyists’ favors
by Jason Bacaj
Star staff writer Anniston Star

The ongoing trial in Montgomery that’s unearthed allegations of political corruption linked to the gambling business has prompted one lawmaker to promise to conduct his own legislative affairs openly.

After learning from the bingo hearings that lobbyists had paid active state legislators for referrals or consultations, state Sen. Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, on “an impulse” Wednesday wrote a pledge of financial transparency and mailed it out to state senate members to sign and return. He mailed it to state house members Thursday.

The pledge states that neither legislators nor anyone in a legislator’s household will “accept or receive any compensation from registered lobbyists that perform services with the State of Alabama or her agencies.”

“We need to know if there’s others that are on retainer for lobbyists,” Dial said.

Two senators, Trip Pittman, R-Daphne, and Paul Bussman, R-Cullman, signed the pledge with Dial Wednesday afternoon.

The pledge doesn’t bind the legislators with the Alabama Ethics Commission or with any legal precedent, said Hugh Evans, general counsel with the commission.

“But I think it does bind them to their constituents,” Evans said. “If they’re assuring their constituents they will not do that, their constituents are the ones they’ll have to answer to.”

Evans had not seen the pledge, but after listening to a reading of it, said he didn’t have a problem with it and believes it supports ethics law, which states legislators cannot receive a thing of value.

It is a “win-win” for the politicians who sign the pledge and the constituents the politician serves, said William Stewart, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alabama. It helps the politician by projecting a “Mr. Clean” image while helping members of the public by assuring them their elected officials aren’t being bribed.

“That’s the way politics is,” Stewart said. “If they get the ball rolling it could help to create greater transparency as far as legislative operations are concerned and they may decide to formalize that into a law such as some other states have. I think it’s a positive development.”

The ethics reform passed in the last legislative session doesn’t go far enough, the bingo vote-buying case revealed, Dial said. It is clear that some legislative members, “past and present,” are on lobbyists’ take, he wrote in a release accompanying the pledge.

Once members sign and return the pledge, it will be filed with the legislature’s clerk in public record to ensure the legislators won’t be taking money from registered lobbyists.

“And if you are, you’ll quit,” Dial said, referring to any legislator who might fall to temptation.