Nixon's Ethics Call

JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Jay Nixon unveiled a broad package of proposals to deal with a variety of ethical issues that have arisen in Missouri's legislature last year.

"When legislators return to the capital in January, few issues are more important than restoring the public's trust," the Democratic governor wrote.

His proposals are:

A complete ban on lobbyists gifts
Shortening the legislative session, although Nixon's proposal does not suggest a specific length
Placing into law for the entire General Assembly the current House policy that prohibits committee meetings at private locations such as country clubs
A ban on office holders from working as political consultants for other legislators
A "cooling off" period before a legislator could become a lobbyist after leaving office
Restrictions on the use of unspent campaign funds when a public official leaves office
Stronger provisions to protect college interns from harassment by legislators

Nixon's proposals for protecting interns are similar to the recommendations made by House Speaker Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff, the week before.

The governor's recommendations include mandated sexual harassment training for office holders and an ombudsman to oversee the internship program.

Nixon called Missouri's current ethics laws "the weakest in the nation."

Missouri is the only state with no limit on both campaign contributions and how much a lobbyist can give to a legislator.

For every year Nixon has been governor, he has called upon the legislature to pass stronger restrictions on political funding and outside special interests.

However, absent this year in Nixon's statement was restoring the voter-approved limits on the total amount of contributions any one source could give to a political candidate.

That idea had met with stiff opposition from many Republican legislators who have argued that because special interests can find ways around contribution limits, a more effective approach is stronger laws requiring disclosure of contributions.

Republican legislative leaders have called for passage of other ethics ideas. But those measures have become bogged down in disputes over what to include in any ethics package.

• Missouri's auditor identifies common data security mistakes in government.

By MDN Staff

State Auditor Nicole Galloway continued her campaign for stronger computer security policies in government with a report listing five of the most common mistakes her office has found.

The list was compiled based on audits of both state and local governments her office has issued this year.

"Despite the increasing awareness of threats to data security across all levels of government, my review found there are still some very basic security measures that have not been implemented," Galloway said.

Passwords: Passwords were shared among workers and workers did not have to regularly change their passwords
Access: Employees were given access to data that was not necessary to perform their jobs
System locks: Access to computers were not locked for a period of time after repeated incorrect passwords were entered
Backups: There was no regular backup of data and backups were not stored off site
User restrictions: Protections did not exist to prevent inappropriate system changes by users nor tracking of who made system changes

When the Democratic auditor was sworn in to replace the deceased Republican auditor, Tom Schweich, Galloway said cyber-security would be a major focus.

Since her appointment in April of this year, Galloway has announced special cyber-security audits of five school districts and issued an audit critical of the security for a database on students maintained by the state Education Department.