State ethics regulators today backed away from using controversy over
House Speaker James A. Amann's fundraising job as a reason to impose
tighter conflict-of-interest rules on the entire General Assembly.
The general counsel to the Citizens Ethics Advisory Board gave board
members a revised draft of an opinion that still would bar Amann from
soliciting lobbyists or their clients for his employer, the National
Multiple Sclerosis Society.

But the revisions appeared to largely limit the effect of the opinion
to Amann. When the original draft was released Monday, lawyers for
the legislature warned that it could jeopardize the ability of
legislators to hold jobs outside the part-time General Assembly.
Today, the board postponed action on the opinion until next month.
The legislature's Democratic leadership sought the delay, saying they
needed time to research how such a broadly written opinion might
change the nature of the legislature.

The new opinion drops language that equated any financial gain for an
employer to gain for a lawmaker, whether the gain was direct or
indirect. In her revised opinion, general counsel Barbara E. Housen
did not retreat from her conclusion, which is offered for the board
to adopt or reject, that Amann was using his office to benefit his
private employer.

"In the board's view, solicitations directed at lobbyists are
effective precisely because they are unavoidably and inherently
coercive and creates an atmosphere of pressure," she wrote. The only
concession to Amann was slight. In the original, she referred to an
atmosphere of "intimidation," instead of "pressure."