Ethics Complaint Against Senator Tossed

Capitol Media Services

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.13.2008

On a party-line vote, the Senate Ethics Committee on Tuesday threw out a complaint that Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, violated rules when he cut off debate on the last night of the session.

Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, R-Chandler, who cast the deciding vote, said Harper, who was presiding over the floor debate, handled the process "very poorly." But he also noted Harper apologized — though he never admitted violating the rules.

The vote disappointed Sen. Ken Cheuvront, D-Phoenix, who filed the complaint.
"You have three Republicans," he said of the five-member panel. "They whitewashed this whole thing."

Cheuvront also discounted the apology — which came only after the ethics complaint was filed — as meaningless. He said the only message that sends future lawmakers is they are free to ignore the rules and then be able to escape any retribution by simply apologizing.

Harper, for his part, remained adamant he did nothing wrong. He said it was Cheuvront and Sen. Paula Aboud, D-Tucson, who were breaking Senate rules that night by engaging in a time-wasting question-and-answer session on a tax bill in hopes of delaying a vote on a measure to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage.
And Harper said he was justified in shutting off their microphones.

"They did not have the right to retain the floor," he said. "It was a charade."
But Harper continued to sidestep questions of why, if he was entitled to cut off debate, he did not rule the pair out of order. Instead, he said at the time, "I clicked on the wrong thing. I clicked on the clear mics" button.

Instead he apologized for "my less-than-stellar acting when the mics were shut off."
Harper also conceded he did not acknowledge any of the calls from the floor for a "point of order," a parliamentary maneuver designed to call attention to an apparently illegal maneuver. Instead, Harper said, he was focused on a motion to suspend further debate, and "nothing else was coherent to me."

Tuesday's vote is the final word on what became a heated dispute the last night of the session over that Senate vote to ask voters to adopt the constitutional amendment on gay marriage.

Cheuvront said he and Aboud, both of whom are gay, had purposely slowed up floor action. There was the possibility that one of the 16 senators whose vote was necessary to approve the gay-marriage amendment would have to leave.
But Cheuvront charged that Harper, who was presiding over the meeting, acted "in cahoots" with Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor, R-Gilbert, to illegally shut off debate on that tax measure.
Harper said under oath Tuesday that he and Verschoor had discussed ways of cutting off debate.

He said, though, it was clear that Cheuvront and Aboud were not interested in the specifics of the tax bill but only to "keep the marriage amendment from coming to the ballot." That, said Harper, gave him the legal right to cut off "this charade."
And if that intent were not crystal-clear that night, Harper said Aboud admitted to it just recently in a radio interview.

"My intentions are irrelevant," Cheuvront said, saying his right to discuss the tax bill with Aboud for as long as he wants is absolute under Senate rules — even if they decided to talk all night.

Sen. Robert Blendu, R-Litchfield Park, one of the members of the Ethics Committee, said the complaint was little more than sour grapes by foes of the gay-marriage amendment who were unable to block a vote.

"Because one group lost and didn't get their way, we find ourselves with an ethics violation," he said. "That is a very bad precedent for this body going forward."
Cheuvront responded he has been on the losing side on various votes on this issue before, all without filing complaints, because everyone followed the rules.

He also denied the complaint was filed to undermine Harper's bid for re-election and strengthen the campaign of Wickenburg resident John Zerby in the Republican primary.