North Pole Rep. John Coghill thinks more education is part of the answer to better ethics in state government. He's probably right, and he has introduced a bill that would require classroom attendance. His proposal (House Bill 119), among other provisions, would require lobbyists to attend ethics class each year, taught by the Alaska Public Offices Commission. The class would "promote adherence to high ethical standards of professional conduct." The provision would require that lobbyists complete the course. There is no requirement for a competency exam, as Alaska requires of high school graduates. Too bad, it'd be fun to see those test scores.
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12 March 5, 2010 - 9:03pm | venn99
stuff
flag this »11 July 9, 2009 - 8:46pm | boling1525
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flag this »9 June 29, 2009 - 1:57pm | Destinyx3
I think this may be a good
I think this may be a good thing. Education is very important and vital.
Regards,
Nicole from wanted ads
flag this »8 March 29, 2007 - 7:29am | onemanfromalaska
Give Me a Break
We just lost our Crab Fishery to Japan, and we are going to give these thugs some ethical education. Alaska is the most corrupt state, my party the republicans, including John Coghill, are to blame. We are on the verge of Making this an American issue,losing our crab fisheryall because of corrupt lobbyist, and you want APOC, A CARETAKER OF THE STEVENS TO offer this class. Wake up Coghill and educate the people in your district, about the fleecing of our natural resources. Most people don't know alot about Our gift to the Japanese, do they Mr Coghill, or did you profit on this HEIST yourself. We are monitoring your every move this session, as we watch SARA recommend a thug lobbyist to the massively corrupt. North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Duncan Feilds.
flag this »7 March 24, 2007 - 5:08pm | cosmo
Pot calling kettle black
I think someone should start to lobby for a bill that mandates the legislators take an ethics class.
flag this »6 February 11, 2007 - 4:55pm | arajack
Assume HB119 applies only
to registered lobbyists. There are countless groups or individuals that testify and/or have appointments with the legislators. Any individual that has an appointment to a legislator, in effect becomes a lobbyist. I believe that Rep. Coghill has god intentions with his bill, but I think he has opened up a can of worms. Does the bill require those attending to pay for the costs putting on the class? How about simply having every person that enters the Capitol Building be required to sign in on a form that says "you are reminded that there are laws, rules and regulations concerning lobbying efforts, and in effect, and you are responssible to be aware of them".
flag this »5 February 11, 2007 - 8:14am | matmulligan
Coghill and education
John Coghill also supports discrimination against gay couples and changing the Alaska Constitution to enshrine bigotry as the law. This guy with a mediocre high school education needs to go back to school and take a civics course. He might learn some thing about what those who wrote the U.S. Constitution called the tyranny of the majority. Republican hypocracy knows no bounds.
flag this »4 February 9, 2007 - 12:07pm | Sonny3xl
Huh?
This has me in stitches: A class for wolves to learn to act like sheep? One would hope that the “among other provisions” would be that the legislators have to learn the same principles. Blaming the lobbyist for one’s own misconduct smacks of a politician, being a politician.
flag this »3 February 9, 2007 - 6:16am | jtgranger
A ethics class? By APOC? With a competency exam?
Of course already flunking the 101 ethics class, and this idea is most amusing with local, state and federal, legislators from Alaska on their way to a Federal Jail?
Like Adak Fisheries, Adavance North, and Ted and Son's ethics class in his great illegal Acts of Congress, isn't enough of a lesson, for our reps on their way to jail?
Of course as the old saying goes,
"Ignorance of the law is not an affirmative defense in a criminal matter."
Clearly ratified, by Justice Holmes, writing for the majority,
"Three generations of embiciles are enough."
flag this »2 February 8, 2007 - 10:06am | karenr
Trying to change a bad law is an effort in futility
A few years ago I requested that Lyda Greene and Bill Stoltze change the law that prohibits parents from accessing information about what material their minor children have checked out with their personal library cards. Both were very responsive in getting the ball rolling but the initiative was vigorously opposed by public library lobbyists and was DOA in the legal committee; never to be heard about again.
In the scope of all the bigger issues our Legislature has to deal with each session, this was very minor. However, the fact that this law violates parental rights is very offensive to me and I would like to have seen it changed.
It is very discouraging to me to realize that there are many laws that violate our rights yet lobbyists and unions so trample the attempts of the indvidual to make a difference that the effort in time and finances required to fight to the bitter end just isn't there.
If the Legislature met in a place that was more accessible to the indvidual, we would be more effective. Lobbyists live in Juneau and their expenses are paid by the corporations/unions they represent. The deck is stacked against the individual before we even step into our representative's office.
flag this »February 9, 2007 - 9:53am | mzencey
About that "futile" effort...
Karen,
Just curious – doesn’t a parent have other ways to monitor or control a child’s reading than asking librarians to report what books the child checks out? If a book is checked out, the book presumably comes home - and a parent can search the child’s room at any time. Or if the parent doesn’t trust the child’s book choices, the parent can take away the library card.
To understand the librarians’ resistance, consider this: To them, confidentiality is a core value, on a par with the confidentiality of confession to priests in the Catholic Church, or the attorney-client privilege.
“The library profession is strongly committed to the protection of personal privacy. ALA policies on confidentiality are longstanding and central to librarians’ professional ethics. Librarians do not release information related to any library patron's research, reading material, or information sought or received, and materials consulted, borrowed, acquired [or]... other personally identifiable uses of library materials, activities, or services."
-- American Library Association Policy 52.4.
School librarians feel strongly that those privacy rights do not change just because the person involved is a child:
From the American Association of School Librarians' (AASL) "Position Statement on the Confidentiality of Library Records":
"The library community recognizes that children and youth have the same rights to privacy as adults." (http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslproftools/
positionstatements/aaslpositionstatementconfidentiality.htm).
To me, this case isn’t a one-sided clash between citizens on the outside and a powerful lobby working the inside corridors of influence in Juneau, it’s a clash between a core value held strongly by one part of society and a valid concern by others in society that can be addressed by non-governmental means.
-- Matt Zencey, ADN editorial writer
flag this »February 9, 2007 - 7:30pm | karenr
Reply to Matt
Matt - Where the problem arose was when my then 8 year old son was given an application for a library card and he had to sign a section acknowledging that I had no right to access information about what he was checking out. Actually, because of his age and reading ability, I was required to sign this form in his behalf; forfeiting my own parental rights over my child. It wasn't the fact that I may or may not know what he checked out that concerned me but it was the principle; having a governmental entity telling my child that it was ok to make his own decisions and leave his parents out of the picture.
On a practical level, I frequently ran into a situation where the list of checked out books would go missing and I would not realize a book or books had not been turned in until I received an overdue fine notice in the mail. I did not have the liberty of asking the librarian what books might have been missing because by law they couldn't tell me. I also did not have the right to stop by the library while running errands and pick up a book my child had ordered. He had to either be with me or have me put on a list of acceptable people to pick up his books. I cannot imagine any parent anywhere that would not be offended that they could not pick up a Curious George book because they were not on their child's list of acceptable people!
All this aggravation could be avoided by not letting my child have his own card but in doing so I would be denying him an opportunity to learn a lesson in responsibility.
I am not making lobbyists a "whipping boy" here. I was told by Senator Greene's staff that there was indeed a group that lobbies for the library and they vigorously opposed this bill. As a matter of fact, similar bills in other states had met with the same opposition.
Just because librarians feel that a child's right to privacy should override a parent's authority over that child does not make it morally or ethically right.
He is MY child. It is the height of arrogance for someone to think that they know better how to raise him. WWII history has shown us what happens when government takes children away from parents in order to mold and shape them into what government sees is an acceptable version of a good citizen. Parents who allow governmental entities to erode their parental rights little by little are in effect just handing their children over.
What my child reads influences how he thinks and who he will become. It is solely my right to oversee the molding and shaping of his entire being. It does not "take a village" to raise my child.
flag this »February 11, 2007 - 1:13pm | dfagan
contact
Karen could you e-mail me at dan@kfqd.com
thanks
Dan Fagan
flag this »February 9, 2007 - 4:09pm | AKMonkey
This is an excellent example...
When somebody goes to Juneau with an idea that doesn't make it through the committee process into law, it inevitabley gets blamed on lobbyists and powerful "special interests". As Matt and Karen have shown, EVERY issue has two sides. If this idea had become law, Matt would problably have written an article about the powerful right-wing special interest groups who used their unfair influence to push it through.
It would be a nice change for everyone to be a little more open minded and realize that their ideas or policies aren't always the majority view. It's just foolish to go pointing your finger at the other side and claim they've used their "special powers" to exert undue influence.
But, to be fair, there are exceptions to every rule and that's where Matt and the rest of the Press Corps need to continue to shine their flashlights.
flag this »1 February 8, 2007 - 5:26am | noseknows
I wonder what Jack has been
Ethics training for lobbyists ? Bring it on !
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