The New Hampshire House has passed a bill that would impose a code of ethics on executive branch employees and officials.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman has more.
The ethics bill aims straight at some of the abuses that have come to light in the past couple of years.
Senator Sylvia Larsen is the prime sponsor of the bill.
She says Former Health and Human Services commissioner Nick Vailas would have been covered if the code had been in place.
...for example, the commissioner of health and human services,..while he was commissioner went out and tried to set up a private health insurance company while he was overseeing the health of our state and using the power of the office to promote a private interest. it would have prohibited that kind of behavior...
Commissioner Vailas resigned from office after his alleged conflict of interest became widely known.
But while the bill would apply to commissioners like Vailas, it would not cover someone like Governor Benson's former so-called volunteer Linda Pepin.
Pepin has been accused of illegally receiving 187,000 dollars in broker's fees on state health and dental insurance contracts.
The state insurance department is seeking to fine Pepin for receiving commissions without a broker's license.
Despite the Pepin controversy, lawmakers found it difficult to include people who are not government officials or employees.
Representative John Lajoie, a Democrat from Concord, says that's too bad.
it doesn't go far enough in that volunteers aren't covered by the ethics ordinance. we in executive departments and administration we felt that we wanted to include volunteers. we couldn't come to consensus on that, we didn't want to scrap the whole bill. its a good start on an ethics bill.
Under the House version of the ethics bill, the attorney general would bring charges against any official or employee who is in violation of the code.
Penalties would vary according to severity of the violation, but some include jail time.
The House version of the bill is now heading back to the Senate, where it originated.
The senate bill, however, didn't include legal penalty provisions.
Senate President Tom Eaton says he thinks the House and Senate have some differences, so they will have to iron out their positions.
we would be having a committee of conference i would say because we do have to have a code of ethics with teeth in it. that's what the senate set out to do..when it put this bill through over to the house.
The Senate and House have about a week to form a committee of conference.
If the committee works out a bill acceptable to the House and Senate, it would head to the Governor.
