V
irginia
C
apitol
C
onnections
, S
ummer
/F
all
2013
6
As a college student in political history and political science
in the 1950s, I learned that Virginia was (in the not entirely
complimentary words of political scientist V. O. Key, Jr.) a
“museum of democracy” with low taxes and limited services, but
honest government.
For more years than I care to acknowledge, I have
unhesitatingly and sincerely defended the Virginia political
campaign disclosures laws as adequate in meeting the public‘s
“need to know.” But as times and conditions change—availability
of big money, more competitive districts, more frequent and larger
party primaries, increased political partisanship, development of
new and pernicious devices to disguise sources of money and
expenses, etc—experience (as Madison noted) should have taught
us “the necessity for auxiliary precautions.”Weak disclosure rules
no longer adequately meet the public’s “need to know” when all
sorts of political action committees and other modern devices and
ruses—sometimes enacted into law, by knowing legislators—
exist primarily to disguise donors and the actual sums donated.
The current problems ongoing in Richmond and elsewhere
in the Commonwealth tell me that I have been wrong in my past
support for unlimited expenditures and bare bones disclosure.
Even Virginia lobbyists acted affirmatively to deal with
unethical conduct in their ranks when they recognized what they
regarded as a deterioration in the professional conduct of a few
of their fellow lobbyists in the mid-1990s. A number of the older
and more conscientious lobbyists banded together and formed
the Virginia Association of Professional Lobbyists, quickly
developing a much needed Lobbyist Code of Ethics, and later
Standards of Professional Practice and Personal Conduct.
Since my retirement in 2008 from lobbying at the General
Assembly, I have often wondered about the potentially corrosive
effect on Virginia state politics from the large amounts of
money required for political candidates to compete in modern
state elections. Likewise, I often ponder the possible negative
effects of that money upon the ethical conduct of candidates and
legislators in pursuing the money they felt they needed to help
acquire or keep the legislative powers they sought. I remembered
vividly that back in the 1980s I had the unpleasant experience
of observing a state senator being censured for the act of selling
his vote and the Senate Banking Committee being unable to
obtain a quorum because of the potential conflicts of interest for
some members. That also was about the same time that the two
competing candidates for a state senate seat in the Richmond area
shocked much of the public’s conscience when each raised more
than the previously unheard of million dollars.
My current reading of American history is that large
amounts of unregulated and unreported money in elections—
the U. S. Supreme Court’s current opinion in
Citizens United
notwithstanding—inevitably
leads
to
corruption and abuse of power and is
destructive of good ethics both in government
and public life. That position is supported by
Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of
the New York Times who has paraphrased
British Lord Acton’s famous 1887 phrase
on the relationship between power and
corruption with the following observation:
“Money corrupts, unlimited money corrupts
absolutely.”
Tom Hyland is a retired local, state and
federal lobbyist residing in Centreville, VA.
“If men were angels, no government
would be necessary,” James Madison
wrote in the Federalist Papers. “If angels
were to govern men, neither internal or
external controls on government would
be necessary. In framing a government,
which is to be administered by men over
men, the great difficulty lies in this: you
must enable the government to control
the governed; and in the next place
oblige it to control itself. A dependence
on the people is, no doubt, the primary
control of the government; but experience has taught mankind the
necessity for auxiliary precautions.”
This treatise on the separation of powers is equally relevant
to the matter of ethics in government. Madison, posting under
the name of Publis further noted that “Justice is the end of
government. It is the end of civil society. It is and ever has been
and ever will be pursued until it can be obtained, or until liberty
be lost in the pursuit.”
For the past six months,
The Washington Post
, has regularly
informed me about allegations of what are at best unethical conduct
in the executive and legislative branches of the state government
in Richmond as well as here in Northern Virginia. I personally
know many of the people mentioned in these reports from my
more than twenty years of service as a part-time legislative staff
member and lobbyist at the Virginia General Assembly.
As a resident of the Washington, D.C. area for more than 52
years, and a historian trained in American political history, I am
not naïve about the long-standing ethical problems and culture of
corruption in federal and state politics. As a former Congressional
Fellow in 1969, I was a second-hand witness to the on-going
corruption and ethical lapses during the Nixon Administration.
Ethics In Government:
Money, Power, and Corruption
By Tom Hyland
FutureLaw
, L.L.C.
John G. “Chip” Dicks
Martin K. Johnson
Sarah D. Dicks
Timothy S. Reiniger
Roger G. Bowers
1802 Bayberry Court
•
Suite 403
•
Richmond, Virginia 23226
Phone:
804-836-1980
•
888-252-6299
•
Fax:
804-225-5508
Website:
•
E-mail:
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