ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 25, 1996 TAG: 9601250014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ray L. Garland
SOURCE: RAY L. GARLAND
WHEN I came to the legislature in 1968, Virginia politics seemed ruled by hyphens: liquor-by-the-drink, pay-as-you-go, conflict-of-interest. Well, the first is now legal and the second more or less dead. But conflict of interest will always be with us, as shown by the recent rumpus over large fees that House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County, collected from Trigon, better known as Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
When The Richmond Times-Dispatch revealed that Trigon had paid Cranwell's law firm $189,000 in the last two years, and was counting on his guidance as it seeks to shed its historic nonprofit status and become an investor-owned company, the combative Cranwell tried to brass it out. Part-time legislators must earn a living, he said, and you must expect situations to arise that create the appearance of conflict. To avoid that, he would abstain on all matters directly touching Trigon.
But that line flunked the smell test and Cranwell soon dropped it, announcing in an emotional floor speech that he would not represent Trigon in its conversion. "I have fully disclosed in accordance with the law," he said, "yet there is still something there that doesn't seem to satisfy everyone." Cranwell added he would ask the House advisory panel on ethics for a ruling on whether he should refrain from voting on the budget and filling two seats on the State Corporation Commission.
The 1996-98 budget presumably will contain a one-time payment from Trigon to the commonwealth of $159 million. This was the sum agreed to by Attorney General James Gilmore in satisfaction of the state's monetary interest in the company's conversion.
Gilmore took the position that because of the highly favorable tax status the company enjoyed over many years, the state was entitled to a share of its existing net worth of $675 million. Trigon had estimated the market value of its stock in a public offering at between $1 billion and $1.75 billion. Of course, a large portion of the capital received from investors would be earmarked for expansion.
To say that Trigon was unmindful of what it was getting by hiring Cranwell, or that Cranwell was unaware of potential accusations of conflict, is absurd. Trigon knew it was getting a skilled lawyer who was also one of the state's most powerful political figures. And for a relatively small law firm to receive $178,647 from a single client in a single year is hardly inconsequential, though it likely wouldn't have come to light had the Times-Dispatch not gone digging into Trigon filings before the SCC.
The conflict-of-interest disclosure forms that legislators must file every year with the clerks of their respective houses paint with a very broad brush. In his 1994 report, for example, Cranwell merely checked that he had received more than $10,000 in fees from unnamed insurance companies. That satisfied the letter of the law. There is, of course, a world of difference between $10,000 and $179,000, just as there is between owning $50,000 of a company's stock and owning $10 million. But the assembly's disclosure forms make no such distinction.
The argument against more specific disclosure is that citizen-legislators earning only $18,000 a year should not be expected to have their personal affairs scrutinized in detail by strangers or competitors. In these nervous, carping days, I can sympathize with that view, though it wasn't one I adopted when a legislator. My view then and now is disclose everything and vote on everything, leaving the public to sort it out at election time.
In all times and places, a legislative body is positively saturated with the potential for conflict of interest. Deciding winners and losers is, in fact, the main business of politics. The only question that matters is whether a legislator has acted to advance a personal interest to the detriment of the public interest.
In that sense, Cranwell could collect large fees from Trigon and even vote on bills relating to its operations - provided he could reasonably justify those votes as being in the public interest.
In the present situation, he could well maintain that a nonprofit Trigon is an anachronism that may wither on the vine if not given access to infusions of capital to make it a stronger competitor in a fast-changing field. He could even present it as no less of an economic-development issue than Motorola and many smaller fry the state is trying to entice.
Of course, by revealing nothing of his association with Trigon, Cranwell is now in no position to do that. But it's equally true that had he disclosed his $179,000 in fees for 1994 - given the controversy over discounts Trigon negotiated with providers that weren't passed directly to those making claims - he might well be ex-Del. Cranwell now.
Considering the huge fees his Republican opponent, Trixie Averill, paid her consultants, one wonders why they didn't do what the Times-Dispatch did. Cranwell's 53 percent share of the vote last November clearly makes him vulnerable to a more serious challenger and illustrates the political danger of full disclosure.
The problem with the constant cries of conflict of interest is that they so often strain at a gnat while swallowing a camel. Carried to their logical extreme, you wouldn't have a quorum on many bills, which brings us back to the only sensible definition of conflict. A legislator should abstain only when he cannot bring himself to vote against his own private interest when he believes that doing so would be in the public's interest.
But that only works with full disclosure. And it's by no means certain a poisoned political climate would permit it to work. Explanations, even when good, are generally a lost cause.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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