Fixing Beacon Hill
A group of like mined individuals is seeking to restore some credibility to the Hill. The folks at FixBeaconHill.com has had a constitutional amendment initiative petition approved by the State. The proposed amendment, among other good things, would have the Speaker of the House and the Senate president be elected in a secret ballot. Also, allowing the speaker and senate president to each appoint 4 leadership positions, requiring both bodies to elect in secret a committee on committee's, establish rules of the chamber, keep minutes on all votes and make public this information.
I think this will be a no brainer for all voters in the state. If this were to pass, many of the problems we have with the Hill would be eliminated.
Just when we thought we had made progress in ethics reform, the Legislature voted to delay new rules designed to limit gift giving by lobbyists till Jan 1. They also voted yesterday to exempt as gifts, commercially reasonable loans, inheritances, gifts from family members and political contributions.
They do want they want ........ to serve themselves.
posted by Jim Pillsbury @ 10:40 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
No surprise to me that they all voted to allow the existing rules to stay in place for another 3 months, after all, they need to get those Xmas presents in their pockets. I like the idea of the Fix Beacon Hill initiative. Keep us in the loop on this one Jim
Commercialy reasonable loans. Is that like the loans we gave AIG to bail them out? Tell me who decides what constitutes reasonable? Baloney. Like my mother use to say, this is like having the fox watch the hen house.
Why do they get to vote on what is legal for them to take as gifts? Isn’t that like letting the bank robber change the law so that he can rob banks without getting in trouble? Tell me what nincompoop came up with this method of make them ethical? The point of ethics reform is to make the people doing bad things accountable for those things, not to make the bad things not bad anymore so they can get away with it. Shameful, shameful, shameful behavior yet again on the part of MA politicians. We must be the laughing stock of the country to be trying to pass this off as ethics reform. Fix it Beacon Hill sounds like they have the right idea. Lets see if they can make it work.
Seems to be a slew of these groups out there touting a plan to take over the Hill. Say another one a few months ago call clean sweep or something, and I thought you were associated with that group. To tell you the truth, none of them seem to have their acts together. Empty promises with no fact or executable plan to back up those promises sounds like the AIG business plan to me. If you ask me, which of course no one as, there is no chance of us getting control at the Hill out of the hands of those in power now. I think our best shot is to institute reforms and regulations that will force them to tow the line we the constituents set in the sand. When they have no way to benefit and gain from serving at the State House, then they will decide not to run, and then we can take over the Hill. Until that happens, we are barking up the wrong tree.
NMP... I agree... but even when we force these reforms and they still don't enact them or better yet... pass laws to subvert them.. what choices do we have?
Clean Sweep is gone and good ridden's to that Republican from NH who hasn't a clue. BUT.. we will have more than a few ballot initiatives to help us regain control over the Hill..
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