Transparency is a better guard against conflicts of interest

By The Journal Times Editorial Board

Sunday, December 21, 2008 6:22 PM CST

The Government Accountability Board made a half-blind effort to put state Supreme Court justices on a straight and narrow path when it comes to their investments and conflicts of interest.

In what some regarded as a curious ruling, the board told one justice, Patricia Roggensack, she could keep her assets in a blind trust to guard against conflict of interest in cases that come before her, and then turned around and refused to grant the same set-up for another justice, Annette Ziegler.

While the mixed decision seems strange on its face, the board had its reasons.

Roggensack set up her blind trust 12 years ago and followed the direction of the then-State Ethics Board, the precursor to the Government Accountability Board.

Ziegler, who was elected to the high court last year, set up her blind trust in 2007 and did not check with regulators before deciding on her plan and then did not follow advice she did receive, according to Associated Press reports.

According to board members, one of the trustees of Ziegler’s blind trust is a relative and not an independent financial institution. That’s not acceptable under federal rules on blind trusts and it demonstrates a bit of poor judgment on the part of the justice. Nor did Ziegler supply the board with copies of the trust documents or information on what assets were put into them.

Judgment is an issue in this case because Ziegler was reprimanded by her colleagues shortly after taking the bench for failing to step aside in cases involving West Bend Savings Bank where her husband was a paid director.

As one board member, former Dane County district attorney Gerald Nichol, put it last week, “she obviously has had some problems in the past understanding conflicts, and it (granting Ziegler’s request) would look like we were giving her a pass.”

And the board declined to do that. Frankly, we would have been all right with denials of both requests. The surest way to keep the courts clear of conflict is simply to have the justices reveal their assets and for them to step down from cases where they have investments in any of the parties that might come before them.

Transparency is a better preventive measure to guard against conflicts of interest than blind trusts. That’s what state law now says and that is the tack that the Government Accountability Board is now enforcing. It’s a welcome change from the weak-kneed approach of previous boards and we believe it will serve state residents well and keep the high court clean.

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