The Two Hats of Mr. Currie
One as a lawmaker, the other as a lobbyist. They clash.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

MARYLAND SEN. Ulysses Currie, who wields significant power as chairman of the state Senate's Budget and Taxation Committee, has represented Prince George's County in Annapolis for more than 20 years, the past 13 of them as a senator. Since at least 2003, he has taken an acute interest in the welfare of a grocery chain whose headquarters are in his district, pushing state officials on the company's behalf on matters small (installing traffic lights and improving intersections near its stores), medium (granting a liquor license) and large (securing public financing to help redevelop a mall). For at least some of that time, if not all of it, Mr. Currie was also on the chain's payroll as a consultant, a point that he did not see fit to disclose either in ethics filings with the General Assembly or in his contacts with state officials. That is deeply troubling.

Perhaps Mr. Currie, whose arrangement with the chain, Shoppers Food and Pharmacy, is now the subject of an FBI investigation, regarded the matter of disclosure as a nicety. It's not. His failure to disclose suggests an attempt to hide the fact that for some years he was apparently acting simultaneously as a lobbyist and a lawmaker. That confusion and conflation of roles amounts to a glaring conflict of interest, one that is explicitly disallowed by law. While Maryland lawmakers can and often do have private-sector employment, the General Assembly's Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics has stated clearly that they are barred from jobs that consist mainly of lobbying state and local officials. If Mr. Currie's work for Shoppers involved tasks beyond lobbying state officials, we haven't heard about them.

The ethics rule is common sense. Lawmakers are free to advocate on behalf of their private and corporate constituents; they are not meant to be guns for hire in the halls of government. They should not seek or receive personal gain in return for their extraordinary access to public officials (over whom Mr. Currie, in his capacity of committee chair, holds the power of budgetary life and death).

In addition to his status as a lawmaker, Mr. Currie, a Democrat, is a likable fellow who has, from time to time, been mentioned as a possible successor to the current Senate president, Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), whose district also includes a part of Prince George's. Few of Mr. Currie's Senate colleagues have been eager to condemn him publicly, though a number are privately aghast. He has not been accused of any crime, although there is every indication that the federal investigation is ongoing. He has not yet explained or defended himself publicly. We wish he would.