Commentary: Voters need to keep lawmakers accountable

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By John Krull TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Between them, Rep. Eric Turner, R-Cicero, and Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, have managed to shine a light on what happens behind closed doors in caucus at the Indiana General Assembly.

The lawmakers likely will not welcome the glare.

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

Commentary button in JPG - no shadowDelph made himself an outcast among his fellow Republicans by throwing a prolonged tantrum over the outcome of House Joint Resolution 3, the proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions. When the Indiana Senate Republican caucus refused to reinstate the civil union ban the Indiana House had stripped out, Delph took to Twitter for 72 hours and held a largely incoherent press conference to express his outrage.

The undignified and churlish nature of his outburst overshadowed Delph’s one legitimate point – that an issue that had claimed an immense amount of public time, energy and attention was being decided not in open debate, but behind closed caucus doors, away from the eyes and ears of the voters.

Delph could have made that point from the Senate floor and forced precisely the kind of discussion he called for, but he chose not to. If he had, his argument likely would have received a much more sympathetic hearing.

Comes now Turner, who, according to some fine reporting from the Associated Press, probably honored the letter of the House ethics rules but may have violated the spirit of those rules. The AP reports that, while Turner recused himself from voting on nursing home legislation because of a conflict of interest, he lobbied intensely in caucus for a preferred outcome.

The source of the conflict was that Turner’s son and daughter both work in the nursing home industry and stood to gain financially if the state were to do away with a moratorium on new nursing home construction that had been in place since 2009. Turner lobbied so fervently in caucus – again, away from public eyes and ears – that his conduct troubled some of his Republican colleagues, but Turner got his way. The moratorium died.

Democrats, predictably, cried foul and sent a letter to House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, demanding an investigation. Bosma complied and sent a letter asking the House Ethics Committee to take a look.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Greg Steuerwald, R-Avon, didn’t make it sound as if he were in any great hurry to get to work.

“What’s interesting is that the letter concerns conduct inside of caucus. It’s well known that (discussions within caucus) are private and confidential,” Steuerwald said. “I will contact the committee members and see how they view comments inside of caucus. I will go with the will of the committee.”

The fact that the conversations in caucus on public policy matters are private and confidential is precisely the problem.

It’s a problem that is exacerbated by the fact that one party has such a lopsided majority right now. There really is no effective mechanism to force public officials to do their business in, well, public.

I remember talking back in 2010 with former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., about why political battling over health care had gotten so vicious.

Lugar blamed the heavy majorities that Democrats had in the U.S. Senate and House at the time. He said that more balanced representation forced legislators to work with each other and, just as important, served as a check on the temptation to behave as if the public’s concerns didn’t matter. Heavy majorities, he said, were a breeding ground for arrogance.

Lugar focused his fire at that time on Democrats – with considerable justice – but his reasoning is non-partisan and hard to argue with.

Left unchecked, public officials from either party will do their best to evade scrutiny and accountability. They just don’t like that kind of light.

That’s why it is important for voters – citizens in a self-governing society – to make sure that the light keeps shining on their elected officials all the time.

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

16 COMMENTS

  1. ….

    Wisdom from Dick Lugar. A true Statesman.

    Time to point out again the POS Tea Party Whacko Trash did Indiana a GREAT favor by backing the worthless loser, Richard Mourdock, handing a GOP Senate seat to the Democrats.

    This. Right here. This is why the Tea Party is a national joke….AND the best thing to ever happen to the Democratic Party.

    • It is beginning to look like the voters are paying more attention. It may well be that Citizens United will do more for the cause of voter participation than anything else. I find it really interesting that in 2012 Barack Obama raised $1 billion, with an average donation of under $100. Mitt Romney raised $750,000, with an average donation of $9000. It seems that John and Jane Voter may decide to put some skin in the game, in order to save us from the 1%.

    • Dick Lugar was a moderate not a statesman. He would stand where ever the wind blowing. Mourdock is a statesman because he will take a stand even when it is not a popular stance. Is one’s life is not decided by the circumstances of one’s conception? A little thinking about what Mourdock was actually trying to say rather than jumping on his poor way of expressing it and the spin it was given by his opponents, and you might have to decide if you are truly pro-life or pro-abortion with exceptions. Even the CCO fell over itself to condemn Mourdock before they thought.

      The problem with the republican party are the Lugar and Parke RINOs who think we need to be more like democrats to win elections.

      • …..

        Well I-E, it’s clear you have drunk the Tea Party Acid Drink. (and I don’t mean the opposite of a base)

        Good for you. You have terrific Whacko, Bunker-living, love-being-ignorant company around you.

        I will acknowledge many of the Tea Party radical right Mourdock fans think of themselves as Republicans. The Scott Walkers, Jeb Bush, John Kasich’s, Karl Roves and Chris Christie’s of the GOP agree “Well, let’s really consider how these fools have helped us win elections. Indeed, we have. They don’t. They lose elections.”

        Join another Party, or start your new one along w/ the rest of the anti-business/anarchist Tea Party Nuts. My investment in Crossroads GPS and the Chamber of Commerce….to eliminate the Tea Party wigged-out thoughts you spouted above… is paying dividends.

        I-E, we disagree. Much of what you spout is unconstitutional. And I remember when you were a free-market, individual-rights, laizze-faire capitalist. (the so-called I-E Going Galt, what a joke that is now)

        I will take the Law, you…well, I don’t know what you’ve become.

    • Al,

      You do know that Fox News and (the drug addict) Rush Limbaugh is trying to convince you that “the Fbi is raiding Liberals all over the country”….don’t you?

      You look foolish.

        • uuuuuuuuu you so clever.

          I’ll bet you stayed up all night thinking of that one.

          “Raiding liberals all over the country”.

          Each poltical party has about 50-100M people associated with them.

          BTW Rush, Coulter, Glen, Hannity, Breitbart are 10 times the race baiters as Al

        • My point is, it’s clear you’re only reading the news from one source. I’m guessing, just guessing, you think that’s the only way to do it. (As I’m sure you believe every other news organization has the same headline “Fbi/liverals!! on their front page too.)

          I’m not an Obama fan. BUT c’mon man, you know you’re being tooled. If you don’t….then I take it “Obama was born in Kenya. Obama is an Arab. Obama is a Dictator. Obama is a Commie” are all things you believe are facts too.

    • good article al………i see the california senator lee a big anti gun advocate was conspiring to traffic in illegal guns……a person could not make this up……..the democrat of illinois house of representatives farnham the so called child advocate home was raided for kiddie porn….that is just two of the commie phonies………what a disgrace them commies are…………

  2. lollllllllllllllllllllllllllllll…..next we will have someone that defrauded the evansville tax payers telling us how to be a tax payer advocate…….lollllllllllllllllllllllllll

  3. “Left unchecked, public officials from either party will do their best to evade scrutiny and accountability. They just don’t like that kind of light.” (Krull, statehousepile.com)

    * * * * * * * * * * *

    Ya think? How many years now have the local democrats hels a super majority on the Evansville City Council?

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