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Conflict law
The constitutional validity of Virginia’s conflict-of-interest law is in doubt and a bill before the General Assembly to revise it does not address that issue, a legal expert said Friday.
A.E. Dick Howard, a University of Virginia Law School professor, spoke to the Senate General Laws Committee, which is considering a bill approved by the House to alter the conflict law.
Mr. Howard, speaking at a meeting attended by virtually all of the House leadership, said the conflict law as it now stands raises serious constitutional concerns.
Under Article IV, Section 9 of the Virginia Constitution, members of the General Assembly are protected from being “questioned in any other place” for “any speech or debate.”
Mr. Howard said the conflict law’s provision allowing the state’s attorney general to decide whether a legislator accused of willfully violating the act should face criminal prosecution might itself violate the constitution’s speech-or-debate protection clause.
Legislatures clearly can impose sanctions on their own members, Mr. Howard said. But once the executive or judicial branches become involved in such questions, the ground is uncertain, he said.
Virginia’s conflict law established ethics advisory panels for each chamber. They act like grand juries when a member’s conduct is questioned.
For simple violations, the ethics panel sends the case back to the chamber of the member involved for internal sanction. But for willful violations, the matter is turned over to the attorney general, who decides whether to prosecute.
Because the law gives the attorney general a discretionary role in prosecuting the case, its constitutionality is suspect, Howard said.
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