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legislators who have serious conflicts of interest should not
vote on bills with which they have the conflict.
I am aware that our Legislature is part-time and that there may
be instances where it would be impractical for legislators to
recuse themselves from voting (e.g., a dentist not voting on medical
issues, a teacher not voting on education issues).
What concerns me is when legislators are appointed to and sit
on boards of organizations that lobby the Legislature and then
do not recuse themselves from voting on issues dear to those organizations.
These legislators are appointed to these boards after they are
elected to office, and in many cases they vote in favor of the
organizations they serve. Cases in point are Sen. Curtis Bramble
and Reps. James Dunnigan and Stephen Clark, all of whom were appointed
to Intermountain Health Care boards during their legislative tenures.
There are many others with similar kinds of conflicts.
One must ask two important questions. Would they have been appointed
to these boards if they were not legislators? Is the reason for
their appointments to influence voting?
In most other legislative jurisdictions, even the appearance of
a conflict is enough to require recusal. Why? Because even the
appearance of a conflict undermines the public's trust in the
legislative process.
Then, why not here in Utah? Why should we be below the acceptable
standard when it comes to ethics? We need to tighten the existing
conflict-of-interest statutes to eliminate this practice.
Steven DeVore
Orem
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