Will Putting Individuals in Prison Change the System?

I'm still sorting through my thoughts on the corruption trials. I did talk to Rep. Sharon Cissna about it a couple of weeks ago. I asked her the question I'd like to ask all our legislators - "You must have known something was going on. Why didn't you do something about it? Ethan Berkowitz did, but what about the rest of you?"

She said that she and other Democrats did do things. They worked hard to keep the worst stuff out of various bills. But they were pretty much cut out of things. The Republican caucus would go off and meet and make all their decisions privately and the Dems would sit in the chambers because the Republicans would come suddenly and call for a vote. At the ending weeks of the session things work quickly and if the Minority are not right there, they lose what small power they have.

She said that there were many times when they spoke up and she even sent me a list of times to look up on the audio recordings of the session. But my Mac couldn't read what she'd sent and I got distracted. My fault. But rather than hold off, I decided to put this up now, especially after reading Saturday's ADN editorial about Tom Anderson's sentence.

Convicted former legislator Tom Anderson was a relatively small fish in Alaska's corruption scandal. He didn't deserve the harshest possible prison sentence. But his post-conviction display of contrition, and the long roster of support letters he produced, didn't justify the shortest possible sentence, either.

Given the range of prison time Anderson faced, federal Judge John Sedwick's sentence of five years is about right. It sends a strong message that those who get caught violating the public trust are going to pay a serious personal price.

Rep. Cissna's comment was that the system itself is the major problem. When she arrived, if I remember her right, her husband had just recently died. She showed up in Juneau and was surrounded by lobbyists fawning all over her. But given her husband recent death, she rejected their efforts to give her attention. The lobbyists very quickly left her alone. Besides, she was a Democrat without much power anyway.

But, she said, anyone who came to Juneau with ego issues was an easy target for the lobbyists. And with most people living away from home and often without their families, they didn't go back to their families at night, but rather were out for dinner and then the bars, often with lobbyists right there to pick up the tab.

She even commented on the ethics training that was mandatory for all legislators last January. What surprised her was how the workshop caused her to realize how she herself had been affected by the Juneau atmosphere. She heard grumbling made by some around her and comparing it to the ethics expert thought, "Yeah, I knew that was wrong, but I've been here long enough that my own standards of right and wrong have been blurred." She said other legislators felt that the consultant didn't really understand how things worked. (Michael Josephson specializes in state legislative ethics having studied the issue throughout the US, and he charged around $30,000 for the one day workshop.)

So I think the ADN is right. Tom Anderson was a small fish. We know that he wasn't even a target at first. But Bobrick and Prewitt, who had agreed to cooperate with the Prosecution in order to lessen their own sentences snagged him. Mind you, Anderson had had consulting stints with Veco where he got paid for not doing much at all, and at the Alaska Telephone Association where he was paid to read legislation about rural telephone service and do analysis on it, but had no work product at the end. Even his own attorney on the final day said that Tom Anderson really shouldn't have been a legislator - he needed money and the pay of a legislator wasn't going to meet those needs.

So, Tom Anderson will go to jail. Will that make a difference? Sure, in the short run people will be careful. But it won't last long if the system stays the same. Apparently the main part of the new ethics law that is having any effect is the limit of $15 meals someone can spend on a legislator.

And without the massive investigation including the video recording for nearly six months at the Baranof Hotel and the tens of thousands of phone calls monitored, there would be precious little evidence and we would probably know nothing.

The trials have revealed a lot and as I sort it out in my own head I'll post more.