The good opinion of the people.

• Author: Seglem, Lee
• Position: Ethics committees

It's pretty tough to be good, do good and look good all at once--but that's what the voters want. Some states are setting up ethics commissions to tell lawmakers how.

Alaska has always laid claim as America's frontier; it is remote and self-reliant. But early this year, something happened in the land of wilderness and tundra to give that frontier image a whole new dimension.

On Jan. 11, opening day of the 1994 legislative session in Juneau, the Alaska Senate voted overwhelmingly to censure one of its own. Senator George Jacko was stripped of his powerful Rules Committee chairmanship and placed on probation for the remainder of his term. Jacko was found to have used his official position to sexually harass women in violation of the state's ethics law. It was the first time in Alaska history that formal sanctions were ever imposed against a member of the Legislature.

More significantly, it was the first major test of a new and controversial ethics oversight system--dominated not, as in previous years, by lawmakers, but by people outside the legislative process. The full Senate may have had the last word in the Jacko case, but in the final analysis, the upper house carried out the wishes of an open-door investigative committee controlled by average citizens. The panel presented its recommendations after public hearings in which testimony was gathered from all parties.

"This was the first time in this state that an ethics committee deliberated in public, and I think generally it has been a success from the level of being a fair forum," says Representative David Finkelstein, who sponsored the legislation that created the panel early in 1993.

In the months since a judgment was rendered in this tumultuous case--amid a mixture of criticism (that it came too slowly and was too lenient) and praise (that it invested some credibility in the statehouse)--the Alaska Legislative Ethics Committee has got on with its business. The panel's nine members--five citizens, four legislators--have rooted through and disposed of a handful of less dramatic cases involving lawmakers. They have issued some 20 advisory opinions interpreting the state's ethics law. An ethics newsletter is distributed regularly to legislative offices, along with a Standards of Conduct handbook. And the panel is laying the groundwork for educational seminars to keep lawmakers up to speed on ethical questions.

"There's been some grumbling from legislators over the fact that our rules say anyone can file a complaint [against a lawmaker] with basically no burden of proof," says Joe Donahue, a retired federal bureaucrat and consultant from Kenai who chairs the panel. "But [the process] seems to be working ... I think it is probably the wave of the future."

Some Early Pioneers

Alaska, of course, is not alone on this frontier. Wisconsin, an early pioneer, has maintained a citizen-dominated ethics board for more than two decades. The panel oversees the activities, not just of members of the Legislature, but of all state officials. More recently, it assumed the task of administering a broad-based ethics code for local officials as well. Elsewhere, Rhode Island established an independent state-level ethics commission in 1977 to oversee all state and municipal appointed and elected officials. Three years ago, a new constitutional amendment gave that board unilateral authority to write an ethics code--a power traditionally reserved for the legislature. In the state of Washington, a citizen-dominated public disclosure commission established in 1972 has become a national model for oversight of legislative lobbying.

More Public Presence

But the recent events in Alaska, and in a number of other states for that matter, exemplify what some experts characterize as the leading edge of a new and far more aggressive round of...