Amid efforts to revive a stalled ethics bill, talk turned to snitches in fast-food joints.
The talk was taking place Thursday in the office of State Senate President Don Williams.
Among the issues raised: Should you go to jail if you see a public official accept a bag at a McDonald’s that contains $10,000 in cash instead of a Big Mac — but you don’t know it?
Williams and Attorney General Dick Blumenthal summoned reporters to discuss the next steps planned to try to pass a law to trim or revoke the pensions of public officials convicted of corruption charges. Blumenthal has tried to pass such a law for four years.
A version of that bill appeared on its way to passage this session, which ends in four weeks. All sides needed — the Republican governor, the legislative majority and minority caucuses — had worked together on a compromise bill. Then, Wednesday night, that compromise fell apart.
Click here for Christine Stuart’s report Wednesday detailing the partisan breakdown.
Williams and Blumenthal vowed Thursday to press ahead and try to resurrect a bipartisan compromise and pass a version of the ethics reform bill before the session ends in four weeks.
“The public wants it,” Blumenthal said Thursday. “For us to fail to give it to them is an abdication of our responsibility.”
“Passing a strong ethics reform bill, even though it may not be perfect… is better than letting this fall by the wayside,” Williams argued.
Sticking points include:
Whether to make the law retroactive. The guv says no; some House Dems say yes.
Whether, because of last-minute legal concerns raised by the governor’s office, to substitute a roundabout process to reduce or revoke pensions. Original ideas: Do it by law. New idea: Give the state the ability to ask judges to raise the penalties on convicted officeholders to match incarceration or pension costs. The governor likes the idea. Her fellow Republicans in the State Senate don’t. Williams and Blumenthal say they don’t consider it necessary, but they’re fine with it, if that’s what it takes to pass a bill.
The Big (Mac) Question
Hovering over debate about the details is a larger question: To what extent do compromises needed for passage water down the bill too much, and make it not worth enacting?
A spirited and entertaining exchange on that subject took place between Sen. Williams and a decidedly unpersuaded Paul Hughes of the Waterbury Republican-American.
Click on the play arrow to the video at the top of this story to watch the exchange.
Hughes pressed Williams about a measure that has dropped out of the bill during negotiations. It would have made it a crime to watch someone receive a bribe but fail to report it.
The reporter and the senator debated the decision to delete that measure based on a sort-of-hypothetical situation: You see a senator at a lunch joint. You see someone hand the senator a bag that’s supposed to contain $10,000 in cash. You don’t report the transaction to authorities.
In real life, the FBI tried to trap former State Sen. Lou DeLuca into taking such a cash-filled bag. DeLuca declined. (He did get caught engaged in other funny business, and had to resign.)
Williams spoke of how some legislators objected to the proposal. Among other objections: How do you know the bag truly contained the cash?
“If there had been other folks present when that McDonald’s bag got passed to Lou, and he peers in and there’s $10,000 there, and Lou makes some reference as to, ‘I can’t accept this’ or whatever… If you’re sitting there and you don’t have the ability to peer into the MacDonald’s bag — it’s probably not funny … Was it $10,000? Or was it a double Big Mac with fries?”
Legislators concluded, Williams said, that “it was easier … making it a crime to fail to report when someone tried to bribe you,” as opposed to when you observe such a transaction.
“It sounds like ‘no snitches,’ to me, to be quite frank,” responded Hughes.
Williams responded that he would have been happy to see that measure pass, but he doesn’t believe it’s worth keeping it if that means sinking the whole bill.
“I don’t have a problem with the language. This was what was told to me … In order to get a bill that folks would agree to it,” he said. “My goal at the end of the day is to get a bill that will pass and be signed by the governor.”