Beacon Hill: Ethics Cesspool?

The Boston Globe editorializes on recent ethics scandals in Massachusetts.

Today, key legislative leaders are again under a cloud. The state inspector general reported recently that three close associates of House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi received more than $1.8 million in unreported lobbying fees from the software firm Cognos. DiMasi, meanwhile, is blocking efforts by the state Ethics Commission to determine what, if any, role he may have played in steering contracts to Cognos.

Another high-profile legislator, House majority leader John Rogers, fell under the scrutiny of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance regarding payments that a political adviser made on Rogers’s vacation home. Toss in an FBI complaint indicating that more elected officials may be linked to Wilkerson’s alleged extortion of undercover agents posing as developers, and the view of public servants grows dimmer still.

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