January 9, 2008

Naifeh Fuzzy on Ethics

House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's disdain for legislative ethics requirements was on full display yesterday as he opened the 2008 session of the Tennessee General Assembly.

Under a new law passed in 2006, lawmakers are required to attend an annual ethics training session at the start of each legislative session.

Naifeh, a Covington Democrat, reminded his House colleagues that Wednesday's ethics training is mandatory, adding, "We all voted for that, for some reason." (emphasis was his own).

The ethics training requirement was part of sweeping ethics legislation passed in the wake of the Tennessee Waltz corruption sting that led to convictions of five former state lawmakers. Four of the lawmakers convicted of taking bribes were members of Jimmy Naifeh's party, so I can understand if Naifeh is repressing the memory of why the legislature voted for the ethics legislation.

In additional to publicly disparaging the ethics training session, Naifeh yesterday granted an "excused absence" to state Rep. Rob Briley, the Nashville Democrat recently convicted of drunk driving after a September crime spree in which he smashed his SUV into an occupied car in DeKalb County, then led police on a high-speed chase into Wilson County, where he eventually stopped and was arrested at gunpoint, and then vandalized the police car while ranting that the officers were "Nazis."

Briley's own disdain for ethics and propriety were on full display last year when the married lawmaker had an affair with the lobbyist for the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association while simultaneously chairing the House Judiciary Committee which was considering high-priority legislation important to the trial lawyers.

Naifeh no doubt will call this a partisan attack, but both parties should take ethics seriously, and the people of Tennessee deserve better than to have a House Speaker who disdains ethics and coddles corrupt lawmakers.

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TN GOP press release here.