What is your plan to end the culture of corruption in state government?

That was the question I asked several times last night at a
Democratic Party of Bernalillo County meeting.

The meeting featured some speechifying by one candidate
for Governor, and three for Lt. Governor. All answered questions
after they introduced themselves.



Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino,
running for the second slot,
was the first to field the question.
He offered nothing new;
campaign finance reform and an
ethics commission.






Next up to bat; was Senate Majority
Leader Michael Sanchez,
who is running for governor.

It is always interesting when
Sanchez responds to ethics
reform questions, because he
seems always, to take them
as a personal insult.



Instead of offering a plan to end the culture of corruption at
once and for all, he pointed to the number of good and hard
working democrats serving the state. Apparently, there are no
good and hard working republicans serving us in Santa Fe.

The bottom line; Sanchez has nothing new to bring to the table,
he is still an obstructionist when it comes to ethics reform.

Next up, Senator Linda
Lopez. Her eyes met mine,
but she didn't call on me,
apparently unwilling to
answer the question she
knew I was going to ask.
She called on someone else,
who asked basically the same
question; so it ended with
her having to answer it anyway.

Lopez is the chair of the Senate Rules Committee, which was
the jumping off point for ethics reform bills in the legislature.
I think that it is fair to say that, she is personally responsible for
the fact that ethics commission legislation didn't make it out
of Senate Rules. She claimed that there was just too much to
do to get around to considering an ethics commission.

She is deathly afraid of an Ethics Commission which might
have "too much power". You can watch and listen to her beat
around the bush in a video on Peter St. Cyr's site, link.

Lopez is in favor of "incremental" ethics reform. The word
incremental could be replaced by "begrudging", like pulling
teeth. She is clearly not a big fan of ethics reform.

The gaping hole in her position on ethics reform, is an argument
posited by a number of anti-ethics reform politicians;

"You can't make people be ethical".

The argument is specious; it sounds good, but isn't sound.

The object is not be make people be ethical, it is to hold them
accountable when they are not.

You can't make people be law abiding either. But you can hold
them accountable when they are not. Enforcing a higher
standard of conduct than the law, is no different than enforcing
the law; you write rules, you hold people accountable to them.

Sheriff Solano, ran out of time
before I could ask him the same
question. I spoke to him later
about the obvious end to the
culture of corruption;
transparency enough, to make it
impossibly difficult to hide
corruption.

The argument seemed to resonate
with him, but no commitment
to promising it.




So far, Mayoral Candidate
Richard Romero is still the only
candidate who has answered the
question by promising to shine
the light of day on the spending of
the public power, trust and treasure.



Richard Romero is still the only candidate who has expressed
willingness to be held honestly accountable to "telling the truth"
as opposed to the going standard, "don't tell lies". Romero said
that he is willing to step up as a role model for the 90,000
constituents, students in the APS, who are told that their
character counts, and rides on their willingness to tell the truth.

Telling the truth, will end the culture of corruption.
Telling no lies, will perpetuate it, for ever.

It is fascinating to discuss truth telling with these people.
You can see that most of them would get on board with truth
telling, but are unwilling to burn the bridge back to the place
where they can be held accountable only for telling lies;

just in case.