The chair of the Indiana House Education Committee has started an education lobbying business. Presumably, he will be paid to lobby himself and his colleagues. This is remarkable, to say the least.
A veteran lawmaker who oversees education in the Indiana House of Representatives has formed a lobbying company to represent education clients, raising potential ethical questions at a time when state lawmakers are considering sweeping new ethics rules.
House Education Chairman Robert Behning, R-Indianapolis, formed Berkshire Education Strategies last June, and has continued leading the House education committee since then. Behning said Wednesday that he is looking to represent student testing company Questar in Oklahoma and would like to sign up more clients. But he added that he was doing everything possible to ensure he only represents clients out of state, and not in Indiana.
“We’re trying to put together a contract that’s very clear nothing would be done in Indiana, even in the potential (ethics) changes, I don’t think I would fall under any,” Behning said. “It’s a citizen legislature and you’re going to have conflicts, regardless. There’s probably bigger conflicts in the legislature…..
“Behning’s decision to start a lobbying firm comes at a sensitive time for House lawmakers, who are considering ethics reform in the wake of a trio of Statehouse scandals involving former House Speaker Pro Tem Eric Turner, former Indiana Department of Transportation Chief of Staff Troy Woodruff and former Schools Superintendent Tony Bennett.”
The words “Indiana legislature” and “ethics” seem to be diametrically opposed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He changed his mind, after pressure from The Speaker, et al.
LikeLike
The level of corruption is breathtaking!
LikeLike
Talk about low expectations. Unless he’s actually violating an existing law, he sees absolutely no reason to consider this a conflict. The bar doesn’t really get any lower than that. He’s a lawmaker who won’t openly break the law. He gets a gold star.
Speaking of testing, I watched (part) of the Senate hearings on annual testing and Dr. Marty West, speaking as an expert, said that they have very little information on how much testing states and districts are doing. He mentioned that Ohio has just completed an assessment of testing, but that was just released a couple of weeks ago and it was obviously only conducted after political pressure from parents and teachers.
It seems strange to me that this whole group of people who focus on testing and collecting data on students never collected THAT information: “how many tests are they actually taking”?
LikeLike
They should have to choose between being a legislator or a lobbyist, not both. If they want to lobby, then they should resign as a legislator or never become a representative in the first place. And legislators should be forced to wait at least 5 years before they could become lobbyists after leaving the house or the senate of the states or the federal government. That’s in an ideal world that does not presently exist.
LikeLike
They’d just tweak the legal definition of “lobbyist” and continue the revolving door. They do that now in DC. They rely on the legal definition of “registered lobbyist”. That definition can be written as narrowly as they feel like writing it.
The devil really is in the details. Ohio “regulated” predatory lenders with great fanfare and many news releases and celebrations. Except, they wrote the law so it doesn’t actually cover any of Ohio’s booming predatory lender industry. It went to the Ohio Supreme Court and one of the justices wrote an (inadvertently) funny outraged dissent where he said “this law doesn’t apply to anyone!”. That was deliberate. They wrote it that way. It’s useless. Pure political play-acting.
LikeLike
One solution is to make all political money transparent. If these corrupt PACs want to hide behind free speech, shine some light, watch the roaches scurry for cover, and let voters decide.
LikeLike
I’m actually oddly optimistic about political corruption and regulatory capture. I’m sure you have seen this in your own area, but people are fed up and it doesn’t matter if they’re Republicans or Democrats. I don’t think political actors are aware of the extent of that. It goes beyond anger to contempt.
I think it “tips” and becomes a huge political problem for politicians. I think it’s close to the tipping point. They characterized Teachout as ideological, the “Left” in the Democratic Party but 90% of what she ran on wasn’t ideological at all, it was about corruption. I think (hope!) we’ll see more of that.
LikeLike
After a bit of outrage from the community and some hesitation on his leaderships part in the legislature (they said they felt a bit uncomfortable, not that it was unethical as they try to showcase their ethics reform ideas) he has decided not to pursue the contract with the company doing business in Indiana to lobby another state to use the same company doing business in Indiana. I figure he will regroup, put a family member in charge of the company and go for it again. Why this whole thing seemed ethical to these people to start with just speaks volumes about the cesspool our legislature has become, particularly in the area of ed reform.
LikeLike
Edushyster,
You getting a cut from the crook, oops I mean politician who’s using your name????
Sue him-ha ha!!!
See ya in Chi-town, I’ll buy you a local beer! I’m thinking Old Style but any of you Second City folks can point me to other Chicago beers.
LikeLike
This Behning guy is a spaz and had a smarmy little smirk on his face when he faced the camera. I think a legal battle would wipe it off his face and make it harder to justify his actions with the usual weasel words.
The antics of that shrimp ex-Governor Mitch Daniels (who took office in 2004 after his “My Man Mitch” outreach to the citizens of Indiana), current governor Mike “Empty Suit” Pence, and that liar in chief Tony Bennett turned me from a GOP voter for 30 years into a staunch Dem voter.
The arrogance of the GOP in Indiana has gone beyond “business-as-usual” bending of the rules to completely illegal. Time to whack ’em upside the head with the beams we remove from their eyes.
LikeLike
Robert Behning, the subject of this article, is a florist. Wonder what he’d do if a bunch of teachers subjected all Hoosier florists to onerous regulations that had nothing to do with the best interests of flower-peddlers like him?
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Dolphin and commented:
Really, folks, these people do not represent Hoosiers. Haha, yeah, I guess technically, they DO represent Hoosiers, but not our ideals. Who elected these ethically questionable yahoos?
LikeLike
Hoosiers elected them. I think it’s a case of selective blindness, apathy, or “my elected rep didn’t do anything wrong–must be a smear job” and numerous other self-told lies.
LikeLike
As dolphin & Bilgewater point out, Hoosiers did technically elect these “ethically questionable yahoos.” What needs to be further examined is who some of the biggest ed.deformers are, just how many votes they received and where those votes came from, but most importantly where the campaign dollars came from. Yes…Behning backed off, but it’s worth delving into backgrounds from time to time.
Three of the names that often pop-up are Brian Bosma (Dist. 88 who ran unopposed BTW), Robert Behning (Dist. 91, and “spotlight” of this post) and Todd Huston (Dist. 37, also unopposed and former chief of staff to disgraced former Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett). Quite a crew…
Bosma received 11791 votes, Behning garnered 5981, and Huston got 9346. That’s a total of 27,118 votes cast that have a profound effect on public education in Indiana.
Bosma’s District 88 is 87.4% white. Behning’s district (37) is 88.5% white, and Huston’s district is the most diverse with only 85.4% being white. (Stats courtesy of ballotpedia.com)
Followthemoney.org has detailed records of just how much moo-lah a candidate receives during a campaign cycle and the sources. I’ll just hit a few highlights…er…low-lights for the 2014 Indiana General Election…
Brian Bosma – $576, 656…unopposed…contributors paid $48.90 per vote…biggest contributor – Dean V. White for $250,000…2010 was a better year dollar wise – $893,253…2012 was better also… $792,025… the bribers got a great deal ’14 w/no opponent.
Robert Behning -$193,910…ran against a college student, Patrick Lockhart who managed to get 3,022 votes with contributions totaling $3,916.Behning’s votes cost $32.42 each…largest contributor was Hoosiers For Economic Growth for $73,000. (Just a note about for this PAC – much of its money comes from the Indiana PAC of American Federation for Children, a pro-voucher outfit headed by Michigan Republican activist Betsy DeVos. The PAC’s money comes from Philadelphia and New York hedge-fund managers and Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton. The clot thickens…)
Todd Huston – the steal of the bunch…only $38,020 in 2014, while collecting $107,822 in 2012… largest donor in 2012 was Hoosiers For Economic Growth for $32,000…only $2,500 from them in ’14, but that’s the beauty of running unopposed…And then there’s that Tony Bennett/Cisco Systems relationship that still hovers around…
It’s scary when you take the time to dig and you see the same names popping up over and over and over and you realize that there isn’t an effing thing you can do about it.
LikeLike
Thanks for the info, DEzerov. Depressing, isn’t it? I mean, people in this conservative county I’m in were driving around with “Not My Man” when Mitch Daniels ran with the slogan “My Man Mitch”. That’s very telling. I don’t know who elected Daniels, either. Can I get a witness?
LikeLike