The recent corruption case of former House speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi cast a harsh light on the potential for abuse by legislators with law practices.
DiMasi, a criminal defense attorney, was convicted of taking $65,000 in kickbacks in exchange for rigging a state contract. He had argued the payments were legitimate referral fees for sending business to his law partner.
“The lawyer-legislator issue always has the potential for conflicts, either in appearance or substance,’’ said Scott Harshbarger, a former state attorney general. “The other side is: The rules are very clear.’’
State law forbids legislators with legal practices from appearing before most state agencies on behalf of clients, if they are getting paid for their work.
Legislators are also barred from acting on budget items and bills that benefit a single community or entity, if they or their law partners have a financial interest. Those are all considered substantive conflicts.
However, in cases where the legislators’ legal work may only give the appearance of a conflict, they must simply disclose it to the State Ethics Commission or to the House or Senate clerk. Then they are free to act.
Yet some legislators never take even that step.
The chairs of the Judiciary Committee, Representative Eugene L. O’Flaherty and Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, have never disclosed a conflict related to their law practices, even though they oversee bills regulating judges, jurors, and fellow attorneys.
Creem, a Newton Democrat, has been Senate chair of the committee since 2009. At the same time, she has had a family law practice, handling divorces, alimony, and child support. This year, she is overseeing a major overhaul of alimony laws.
She said she resolved her unease about her dual roles by consulting privately with the Ethics Commission, an approach that many legislators use to quietly assure themselves that they are not violating the conflict of interest law. The Ethics Commission refuses to publicly discuss those inquiries.
