April 8, 2008
Contact: Arthur C. Barton 323-1148

Today the Ethics Commission again made a statement that careless reporting of financial information in required annual reports to the Commission is unacceptable. The annual financial disclosure forms are the basis for determining conflicts of interest government officials may have. Erroneous, incomplete or inaccurate information is subject to penalties under perjury laws.

Senator Ciccone, as other elected officials before him, showed a cavalier attitude toward providing the information required by the annual disclosure form. His dismissive attitude has now had a price and a well-deserved price.

More troubling is the absence of censure by the Ethics Commission regarding Senator Ciccone’s conflicts of interest.

The real issue here is that Senator Ciccone sponsored and voted for legislation that would have had taxpayers subsidize his employer, the Laborers Union, when the union was involved in disputes with municipalities and state agencies.

This case shows that the current Ethics regulations are deeply flawed. The investigators for the Ethics Commission concluded that Senator Ciccone’s actions clearly represented a conflict of interest. But current regulations are interpreted so his conflict is acceptable because other public employee unions also would have benefited from Senator Ciccone’s legislation.

Something is wrong with this picture. Senator Ciccone is fined for carelessly filling out a financial disclosure form, but his legislative actions determined to represent a conflict of interest are blessed by the Ethics Commission because a handful of large public employee unions would share in the benefits conferred by the legislation Ciccone sponsored.

Operation Clean Government applauds the Ethics Commission for upholding the importance of the accuracy and completeness of the required financial disclosure statements, which is the standard for information about potential conflicts of interest.

We implore the Ethics Commission to review its regulations and their interpretation that allow legislators with flagrant conflicts of interest to avoid punishment by granting favorable treatment to their friends and allies as well as themselves. The “class exception” which has bailed out Senator Ciccone encourages more pigs to feed at the public trough so no one pig can be singled out.