Public, private conflicts

by Scott Mooneyham, Capitol Press Association, published in Greenville Daily Reflector, March 27, 2014.

Since North Carolina legislators first approved the State Ethics Act in 2006, policymakers and political observers have continued to discuss to what extent state law should control the revolving door between government and the private sector.

The problems created by that revolving door are obvious enough.

People enter into government employment or they win elective office. Once there, they acquire inside knowledge and contacts, either to agency officials or fellow elected officials.

At what point is it appropriate or inappropriate to use the information and contacts to later influence government on behalf of a new private employer?

More to the point, how does the public prevent someone who is looking to make a jump from the public to the private sector not act in ways, before leaving, that could benefit that private-sector employer? Even if that doesn’t occur, how do policymakers prevent the perception that might have occurred?

These aren’t easy questions, for the simple reason that people have to work, they have to eat. Being a state employee or an elected official should not disqualify anyone from a wide range of private sector employment. But the taxpayers who foot the bill for government should not be paying for conflicts of interest either.

With that in mind, state legislators put in place a six-month cooling-off period intended to prevent legislators and a handful of top state officials from immediately going to work as lobbyists. The same restrictions apply to most state employees when it comes to lobbying the agencies where they worked (because the law does not define the General Assembly as a state agency, legislative staffers have been able to sidestep the cooling-off period).

The cooling-off period has not necessarily had its intended effect.

A more recent worry has been state workers who oversee state contracts entered into with private-sectors firms. Under current law, they can work for an agency one day and go to work for the firm that was awarded the contract the next.

After hearing about that kind of situation involving a trouble Medicaid claims processing contract, state legislators appear poised to try to stop the practice.

They have General Assembly lawyers drawing up legislation to create a cooling-off period that would prevent scenarios where state agency officials overseeing contracts go to work immediately for the private-sector firms that win the contracts.

It will be interesting to see how the debate shakes out. While legislators discuss those terrible state agency officials and their conflicts of interest, perhaps they will take another look at themselves and the revolving door at the General Assembly.

A little loophole tightening is in order, on a couple of fronts.

 http://www.reflector.com/opinion/mooneyham/mooneyham-public-private-conflicts-2430011