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OPINION: Not conflict of interest because panel says so

Morning Sentinel Staff

Rep. Jon Hinck, D-Portland, has a perceived conflict of interest.

His wife is an attorney whose clients include Maine's major wind power companies. He is a lawmaker who sits on the Legislature's Utilities and Energy Committee, whose purview includes bills affecting wind power companies.

The only thing preventing this situation from being an actual, rather than perceptual, conflict of interest is the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, which -- in a recent opinion -- said it was not a conflict.

While this satisfies the law, nothing about this decision should really satisfy the public.

Hinck still has a prima facie conflict, regardless of whether he and the ethics panel agree. It's neither a negative nor positive conflict -- the ethics panel is correct in that, at least. The mere presence of this conflict of interest should not affect Hinck's performance as a lawmaker.

But it is there, and there's no good argument against admitting it. This is where the ethics panel's process for evaluating these conflicts falls a little flat. The standard for whether conflicts exist was set in 1983, in an opinion about then-Rep. Libby Mitchell.

Then-Attorney General Jim Tierney opined: "It is clear that the Legislature never intended that a member of either House must be disqualified from voting on a proposal merely because she or a member of her immediate family is compensated for work performed for an employer or a client who might be affected by the legislation."

Although times have changed, the standard hasn't.

Relying on a 27-year-old legal opinion as the basis for whether conflicts of interest exist is short-sighted; ethics, after all, are not static. As the years pass, cultural and community standards change, as evidenced by tastes in fashion, music and, yes, politics.

What would pass for a conflict in one decade may not apply in another. Each situation needs its own analysis, based on the issue, the Legislature, the tenor of the times.

In short, resolving these conflicts requires much more work than looking up a decision from three decades ago and saying, yup, no problem here. The ethics panel had a chance to revitalize and modernize the process for identifying conflicts with Hinck and just didn't.

And, in fairness to the panel, their colleagues under the dome have been less than helpful in this regard. Recent attempts at probing ethical guidelines, defining conflicts of interest and weighty phrases like "undue influence" have tended to die quiet deaths in the hallways of the State House.

So we're stuck with pointless shows like the ethics committee's hearing, in which it relied on one source of evidence -- the person with the conflict -- and an opinion from the same year that Michael Jackson unveiled "Thriller" and the first version of Microsoft Word was released.

Going forward, the ethics committee should be more vigilant in examining these conflict cases. And lawmakers like Hinck should not hesitate to admit to conflicts when they are there.

It's not their presence that is the problem, but rather the degree.