JACKSON — Secrecy has been pervasive throughout Haley Barbour’s governance. But it was brought into sharper focus last week when Barbour asked the state Ethics Commission to keep secret the financial holdings in his “blind trust,” covered by a new law he signed four months ago.
Significantly, if the Ethics Commission yields to Barbour’s secrecy request, he would become the only elected public official in the state exempted from the open record provision of the new law that defines how blind trusts are created and administered.
“It’s incredibly arrogant for the chief executive of the state to say others must comply with the law but he is not going to abide by it,” declared Rep. Cecil Brown, D- Jackson, considered the Legislature’s most knowledgeable fiscal authority.
Blind trusts are commonly used by federal officials to remove management of their financial portfolio from their personal control. When Barbour became governor in 2003, though Mississippi had no law regarding blind trusts, Barbour established such an account and listed it with no details in his state Ethics Commission economic interest filing.
The 2008 Legislature passed and Barbour signed a bill giving the Ethics Commission authority to set requirements of blind trusts reported by public officials in their statement of economic interests exceeding $2,500.
Evidently Barbour only realized recently that under the blind trust provision in the bill he signed and helped craft in the Senate, blind trusts are subject to the state Open Records law once they are filed with the Ethics Commission.
When Barbour’s people woke up to the fact that his closely guarded financial holdings — especially his presumed stake in his old Washington lobby firm — could be laid open for the world to see, he rushed his personal lawyer to last Friday’s Ethics Commission meeting trying to stop the commission from adopting rules regarding blind trusts.
For now, the commission held up on the rules, but most of the commission — even some Barbour appointees — made it clear that since Barbour helped fashion and signed the new law, now he would have to live with it.
Ethics Commission Director Tom Hood emphasized that the agency had only postponed adopting the rules until its September meeting. “We did that to give Barbour’s attorney time to possibly show any legal basis for their contention that the governor’s filing is not public record,” Hood said, but he added “The commission felt it is his problem.”
Hood said the commission sponsored a House bill in the 2008 Legislature that tracked the model blind trust act drawn by COGEL (Council on Governmental Ethics Laws) that several states (among them Texas and Tennessee) have enacted. The state Senate basically scrapped the House-passed bill, substituting its own version after clearing it with Barbour.
It seems from what Ed Brunini, Barbour’s attorney, told the commission, Barbour is upset that the people might find out how rich he is (remember, unlike his three predecessors he doesn’t make public his income tax return) or his outside sources of income might become public.
Of course, the biggie outside financial source he keeps closely guarded is his presumed stake (as two national publications reported last year) in Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, the Washington lobby firm he founded. If BG&R is now a source of his income, Barbour could be exposed to conflict-of-interest charges since BG&R’s top client is P. Lorillard tobacco company. Barbour with his veto pen has shielded tobacco from higher state taxes in Mississippi.
The master Beltway politician, Barbour five years ago marched straight down from Washington’s K Street with a huge bundle of money, imprinting a Karl Rovian-Republican brand on Mississippi’s yokel politics. The high-riding Barbour is now in hot water in several directions across the state.
His “blind trust boo-boo” came after Barbour had let a mentally disturbed guy be put to death for a murder in which he had not wielded the fatal blow. Then, two days later he raised hackles by freeing a Governor’s Mansion trusty who had blasted his wife to death with a shotgun in broad daylight on a public street.
