Champion’s lack of clarity shows need for immediate ethics change at the Legislature

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When he’s not at the Legislature, Senate President Bobby Joe Champion practices law. The Minneapolis DFLer is well acquainted with rules requiring lawyers to avoid conflicts of interest and steer clear of anything giving even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

At least one would think that’s the case. Unfortunately, it’s a wildly presumptuous conclusion. Neither Champion nor his DFL and GOP colleagues seem to understand, or worse, care, about the deep ethical morass they’ve created through years of inaction on spending reforms, especially when it comes to lax oversight of billions in grants to nonprofits. Now, the morass has exploded to the surface, again.

In the past week through reporting initially by the Minnesota Reformer, it surfaced that Champion recently sponsored a bill to steer $1 million to a private legal client, the Rev. Jerry McAfee, for his 21 Days of Peace organization to advance “social equity building and community engagement” in Minneapolis.

Champion not only sponsored the bill, he’s the chairman of the Senate Jobs and Economic Development Committee where the measure remains under consideration.

This wasn’t Champion’s first effort on behalf of McAfee. In 2023, Champion sponsored and passed a bill that gave $3 million to McAfee’s organization. Also in 2023, he directed $1.5 million to the Stairstep Foundation for which he once worked and at which his legislative assistant moonlighted.

In response to the revelations, Champion temporarily stepped down as chairman of the Senate Ethics Subcommittee. He asked the same panel for an ethics advisory opinion. Let’s pause for a moment to contemplate what we’re witnessing. The ethics chairman, a legislator who holds multiple leadership roles, fails to see a conflict here.

The normally outgoing Champion has recently evaded reporters and at a committee meeting last week called the initial reports a “smear.”

He’s in denial, and he’s not alone.

Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, is on board with the rope-a-dope strategy to wait for an advisory opinion, saying it “should be the first and only step that this body takes with regard to the participation and leadership of Senator Champion.”

Not only does her statement predetermine a toothless outcome, but Murphy also clearly fails to see the roiling ethics crisis at the Capitol.

Also uncharacteristically sanguine for much of the week was the 32-member Senate Republican minority caucus whose leader, Sen. Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, at least suggested in a speech that Champion should be relieved — perhaps temporarily — from the presidency and the chairmanship of the Jobs Committee.

The GOP caucus filed an ethics complaint against Champion on Friday, which is all the more remarkable in that the tepid action reveals the gaping lack of rules preventing the Senate president’s behavior. Complaints aren’t needed.

What is needed is immediate and long overdue reform that would make ethics complaints unnecessary.

The Legislature is an exclusive club of 201. It sets its own rules of engagement. Ethics reform has rarely been a priority. State lawmakers have consistently rebuffed significant reforms since the mid-1990s when the Legislature passed a ban on accepting gifts from lobbyists.

Since then, little to nothing has been advanced on the ethics front. That means generations of legislators and governors from the DFL, Republican and Reform parties have come, gone and rendered themselves accessible targets of influence peddlers.

As a body, they’ve declined to erect higher ethical boundaries around what constitutes a conflict of interest in voting, to require more detailed disclosure of compromising financial interests or to compel lobbyists to disclose how much they spend to get new laws passed.

In a 2015 study, the Center for Public Integrity gave Minnesota a grade of D- and ranked the state 28th in terms of integrity. The ethics grade hasn’t improved.

In 2020, the Coalition for Integrity ranked Minnesota 29th in 2020 on its S.W.A.M.P. (States with Anti-Corruption Measures for Public officials) index. Both faulted Minnesota’s lack of independent ethics oversight of public officials as deeply concerning.

David Schultz, a Hamline University political science and law professor, is one of the few habitual observers outside the Capitol who monitors such matters. He told my Minnesota Star Tribune colleagues that Champion doesn’t appear to have violated any laws. Unfortunately, he’s probably correct.

Schultz said the current situation is the consequence of a part-time Legislature and “some of the weakest conflict of interest laws in the country.”

In other words, that’s just how we’ve always done business in Minnesota.

The Legislature was alerted long ago about problems with how money is granted to nonprofits. In 2007, the Office of the Legislative Auditor, the widely admired nonpartisan state agency, issued a report warning about the dangers of legislatively authorized grants.

Signed by former state auditor Jim Nobles and written by his successor, the current auditor, Judy Randall, the report urged the Legislature to stop deciding in law which nonprofits would receive grants.

The report found the state’s process for distributing and managing some $1 billion in grants to nonprofits to be fragmented and inconsistent. The legislative auditor recommended the creation of a Grants Management Agency and advised that state agencies, not legislators, should determine who receives grants through a competitive process.

The report has lingered as nothing more than a dust magnet.

Several weeks ago, before Champion’s weak ethics reveal, House Fraud Prevention Committee Chairwoman Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, and the co-chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to all House finance committee chairs, urging them to refrain from the practice of legislatively identifying who gets grants.

The responses from both DFL and GOP chairs were supportive. Much more than lip service is needed. The change should not be a suggestion — it should be law.

Who will step up and build a bipartisan coalition dedicated to advancing long overdue reforms?

An ethics champion is needed. Now.