Triangulate this story and you’ll find it falls somewhere between laughable, maddening and ironic: A bill moving forward in the Florida Senate would ban state college and university employees, such as professors, from serving in the state legislature.
Cue up the “Yeah, no need to taint the Capitol gene pool with some smart people” joke.
Although the proposal seems far from certain (SB 1560 only passed the Senate Rules Subcommittee on Ethics and Elections by a 7-6 vote on Monday), it has nevertheless passed its first legislative obstacle.
The bill, authored by Sen. John Thrasher, is supposed to prevent conflicts of interest by folks from state colleges and universities. But banning them from serving in the legislature doesn’t make sense. Because, almost by definition, every person in the state has the potential for a conflict of interest. That’s true not just for the state legislature, but every county commission, town council and water district seat.
It’s how our citizen government works. We pick people who live and work in our communities and ask them to manage the affairs of those towns and counties and the state. That’s why every governing body already has conflict-of-interest rules that forbid voting on a bill or ordinance from which you could benefit.
(via Gerry Canavan)
Comments
9 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.I can’t even begin to fathom the tortured logic those seven senators Florida senators used to vote yes. The law does not even pass the sniff test for constitutionality. Why not say cashiers or retirees can’t run for office. It is the same idea.
None of the seven senators who voted yes should be allowed on the ethics committee. They obviously do not know anything about ethics. In fact they should be censured and ridiculed by the other state senators for being complete morons.
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Next up: Democrats, Socialists, Libertarians, and Independents.
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Speaking as an exile from Florida, my only surprise in this is that they didn’t do it long long ago.
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I suppose that I could maybe see a reason why you wouldn’t want professors on the receiving end of grants to be on the giving end, but I can’t imagine a constitutionally valid reason why they couldn’t be representatives. Does this work in reverse? Does this mean that members of the legislature wouldn’t be able to act as visiting professors?
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Yes, many members of the Florida legislature would not be able to act as any kind of professor. For which fact we may all be grateful.
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*snick*
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Rick covers a Florida audience with Santorum. They eagerly lap it up.
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Rick is really on to something. In fact, it’s not just a lack of education that benefits republicans, stupid works just as well:
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http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html
I messed up the link!
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