With any luck—and we’ll need at least a little luck—New Mexico will soon get the full-scale ethics overhaul it so richly deserves. An impressive if imperfect strategy for ethics reform looks like it’s going to make it through at the federal level. Earlier this week, our own guv’s ethics reform task force released some suggestions for cleaning up our act here in New Mexico. Lord knows we need it. The task force is recommending a special legislative session to exclusively address these proposals. It’s easy to be cynical about this kind of thing, but a lot of the task force’s ideas are excellent—maybe even essential. Public financing for state-wide offices along the lines of what we now have here in Albuquerque? Why not? An independent ethics commission to monitor the shady dealings of our shadiest public officials? Sure! Requiring lobbyists to wear ID badges when they’re floating around the Roundhouse? Not as crazy as Monahan makes it sound. The task force is closing shop at the end of the month. Then it’ll be up to our legislature to push something through that’s more substantial than we got last time around. We’ll see.
A Dirty Business
2 min read
