Pluperfect purity.

One of the worst scandals in Kentucky's history saw the former House speaker, two sitting legislators and five former lawmakers convicted in 1992 on a series of extortion and racketeering charges that rocked the foundations of Frankfort's political establishment.

In response, lawmakers, besieged with angry constituent phone calls and letters. passed in 1993 a sweeping ethics reform law that spells out specific policy on such land mine topics as financial disclosures and lobbyist expenditures. It also provides for regular ethics counseling for legislators and investigations of them when the suspicions of a new and powerful legislative ethics commission are aroused.

Kentucky's ethics law has since been characterized, according to Earl S. Mackey, the commission's executive director, as "one of the most comprehensive and strongest in the nation."

But for Walter Baker, a long-time and respected Republican senator in Kentucky, the new law only narrowly skirts disaster. "We might have gone overboard," says Baker, who has emerged as an important critic of extensive ethics reform policies. "The end result is that there has been an inhibition on the operation of state government."

How such widely divergent interpretations of the same law could arise from two public officials dedicated to clean government goes to the heart of the ethics reform movement of the 1990s--specifically, at what point do sometimes narrow and specific ethics laws become cumbersome and just another burden for already harried lawmakers? Or, more precisely, when is enough too much?

"It's a question that legislatures across the country are going to be increasingly asking themselves," says Alan Rosenthal, professor of political science at Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics, who has recently completed an exhaustive study of ethics standards and reform in state legislatures for the Twentieth Century Fund.

Rosenthal points to an inevitable dynamic that appears to govern nearly every state legislature in a scandal's usually frantic aftermath--the tendency to overreact. "Whenever there is a scandal of any proportion--as there was in Kentucky--the press is likely to call for major reforms while groups like Common Cause use the opportunity to try and get their agenda enacted," he says.

The cumulative result often is a "legislature that eventually has to give in," Rosenthal continues, "and in giving in, they go further then they would have liked to go and further than perhaps it makes sense to go."

THE POLITICS OF ETHICS

Legislative analysts and lawmakers also point to the maelstrom of public cynicism and anger that they say exists today in a culture that simultaneously derogates all elected officials as crooks while explosively demanding stern measures for even the smallest offense.

"What we're creating is a politics of ethics," says Roger Moe, majority leader of the Minnesota Senate where a stern and inclusive ethical conduct law for legislators and lobbyists passed this year. "Ethics today is a political issue. Candidates use it in their campaigns to get elected, and the idea that somehow corruption pervades [the institution], despite all our reform efforts, is a powerful one."

Other public officials say the issue of political ethics has become so potent that legislatures enacting what some critics see as draconian measures are rarely populated with members powerful or brave enough to voice public opposition to bills they privately loathe. "If you're against something like that, people may start wondering what you're trying to hide," says Rosenthal. "In any legislature, it is very hard today to argue against ethics reform. Baker of Kentucky was able to stand up against some of the rules, but only because he has such an outstanding reputation as a legislator."

Ann Bailey, chief counsel to the California Senate Committee on Legislative Ethics, agrees: "The problem with all of the ethics reform is that any time you try to mess with it, to maybe change something for the better, the voters will automatically think you're trying to weaken the rules, which can be a politically tricky problem."

A DECLINE OF TRUST

Yet despite complaints about ethics excess, few lawmakers will deny that had there not been ethical violations or political corruption in the first place there would never have been an ethics reform movement.

"The entire ethics movement is a response to what people began to see as simple unaccountability" says Dennis Thompson, the executive director of Harvard University's ethics program--a series of courses designed to emphasize moral behavior and ethical conduct in various professions. "You see it everywhere; people want more accountability, not only in government but also in the universities, hospitals, corporations and even that last bastion of unaccountable power--the media."

For Thompson, the proliferation of an ethics culture was inevitable, a "necessary by-product of the decline of trust," he calls it. And other scholars agree, arguing that pervasive public cynicism has almost completely replaced the culture of innocence and respect for institutions that preceded it.

The mistrust is made only greater by the ongoing and seemingly endless nature of contemporary scandals. "The final demoralizing effect of the numerous scandals on our politics is to make us feel perpetually dirty," writes author Suzanne Garment in her 1992 book, Scandal--The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics, adding that because of sterner ethics laws "our system is now able, perhaps for the first time, to produce scandals at will, in steady and unending supply."

Scholar Peter de Lean in his 1993 work, Thinking About Political Corruption, notes simply that despite "the glare of Watergate, Irangate and all the other 'gates,' the Ethics in Government Act, independent counsels and other measures notwithstanding, 'the country at large' cannot seem to rid ourselves of the curse called political corruption."

Conversely, according to a recent Time magazine survey, unethical behavior and decisions among voters themselves increase in tandem with the real or imagined foibles of their leaders. "Lies flourish in social uncertainty, when people no longer understand or agree on the rules governing their behavior toward one another," the magazine notes, adding, "that seems to be what is happening now."

A CYNICAL PRESS

But others say the rise in public skepticism that drives ethics reform is also a product of an overly aggressive press at state capitals across the country. "The press has definitely contributed to an overall negative atmosphere because they are feeling the pressure of increased competition from some of the more sensational television news shows," says Minnesota's Moe. "And the more they feel that way, the more they resort to sensational journalism."

In New Mexico, after a state representative was convicted of taking a bribe in 1992, lawmakers refused to be rushed into a severe ethics reform package, opting instead to create a task force to study the need for reform while a separate commission gathered to weigh the charges against the lawmaker in question.

Legislative leaders also required all lawmakers to recite the legislator's ethics code in an effort to make the rules more tangible. "New Mexico did very well in responding to this particular scandal," says Rosenthal. "They didn't jump into anything, but instead came up with a moderate, reasonable approach to reform."

But Raymond G. Sanchez, speaker of New Mexico's House, says that for all of the Legislature's work trying to balance the need against the danger of unnecessarily harsh ethics reform, local newspaper coverage remained primarily negative. "I thought we did a good job and behaved responsibly both in regards to the institution of the legislature and the rights of the accused lawmaker," he says. "But you would never know it by the coverage we get. It seemed to me a little bit unbalanced."

In California, where the Legislature already had fairly strict ethics codes, citizens in 1990 passed a state initiative limiting gifts, honoraria and conflicts of interest. The Legislature set up ethics training for lawmakers. "We hired an outside consultant, someone with a national reputation, and put on a very instructive program," recalls Bailey of the Senate Committee on Legislative Ethics. "But the press response was to attack us for doing it in private, and then they also said we spent too much for the consultant."

When the same commission two years later conducted another ethics training session without the previously mentioned consultant, "they attacked us for not bringing that same man again, and they said we didn't do so because he was too tough on us," continues Bailey. "It just proves that not only is the press very cynical on these matters, but that there is little impetus among reporters to write a story when something good does happen."

WHO, ME?

Reporters who exclusively cover state capitals, however, say suggestions that they are responsible for the public's cynicism toward state lawmakers reeks of "killing the messenger."

"It's true that the press, especially around state capitals, is more aggressive than ever before, but that's just because we're doing a better job than ever before," says Russ Wise, the vice president of Louisiana's Capital Correspondents' Association in Baton Rouge, where scandals sometimes seem as regular and frequent as rain. "Despite all of the recent reform efforts, there are still just too many examples of the damage that can be done not only to a state's treasury, but also to the sanctity of the state itself, if we didn't report aggressively."

FINGERPOINTING AT LOBBYISTS

Lobbyists, too, are defensive in the new ethics culture, but for different reasons. While politicians blame the press for pushing ethics reform too far, public perception blames lobbyists for not pushing them far enough. "Anyone who has been in this business Long enough can tell you that all of these ethics reform laws have little to do with how a lobbyist does business," says Kevin Neal, an assistant vice president for governmental affairs with the Florida lobbying firm of Associated Industries.

"What is far more effective is our own self-policing," continues Neal. "The one thing that can make or break a lobbyist is his or her reputation. If you're unethical, you'll lose contact with lawmakers in a minute, and that's incentive enough to be good."

Patti Jo Baker, executive director of the American League of Lobbyists (ALL) in Alexandria, Va., similarly touts the self-policing angle. "I know of lobbyists who have been in this business for 20 or 30 years who have emphasized ethics way before there was all of this talk about ethics reform," she says. "They just saw it as a way of doing good business."

Despite such self-regulating inclinations, the membership of ALL, which today tops the 500 mark, several years ago ratified its own ethics guidelines that in some ways reads like the strict ethics laws being passed in many legislatures. "We just thought it was important to get it out there on record," Baker adds.

Yet even as lawmakers and lobbyists adhere to increasingly restrictive ethical standards, scandals continue to leave their mark on contemporary state legislatures. Besides Kentucky and New Mexico, scandals have also visited the Arizona Legislature where seven lawmakers two years ago were convicted of bribery and money laundering, and Washington where last year the state's Public Disclosure Commission fined both party caucuses $100,000 for the illegal use of legislative staffs and public facilities. In Michigan, the director of the House Fiscal Agency was convicted in state and federal courts last fall of embezzlement conspiracy and racketeering and tax evasion. He'll spend up to 10 years in prison and has been ordered to repay the state $834,000, the estimated amount of state funds he siphoned off and gave to seven former fiscal agency employees and consultants.

Inevitably, each scandal brings calls for more reform, and nearly as inevitably the restrictions over what lawmakers can and cannot do grow tighter. New Mexico's Sanchez, noting that his state is a small one where nearly every lobbyist is a friend, complains about ethics laws that almost completely prevent him from meeting with such a friend, even in a social setting, without making an official report of it. Moe in Minnesota says attending a local banquet and receiving an award--a politician's lot in life--could be construed as a violation of his state's new ethics policies.

And in Kentucky, the ethics guidelines not only restrict lawmaker contact with lobbyists, but with other state agencies as well. "I'm not supposed to write a letter to an agency of the state government on behalf of a constituent to ask them to do anything special," Baker says. "Well, what is special? If it's my constituent and he or she has a problem with state government, I'm going to wade in there to help. But I'm not sure the ethics commission would agree."

NO END IN SIGHT

"There just doesn't seem to be any end to it," notes lobbyist Neal in Florida, where recent laws require the disclosure and reporting of all transactions, no matter how minor, between lobbyists and lawmakers. "No matter what the social occasion is or how informal or spur of the moment it is, it all has to be reported. It is almost an invasion of privacy."

But given the dynamics of the growing ethics culture, lawmakers believe that more, not fewer, restrictions will greet them in the years ahead.

For Rutger's Rosenthal that's not all bad news. "The new rules of conduct may be inconvenient for individual lawmakers, but they ultimately move legislatures in the direction they ought to be going," he says. "In fact I believe that all or most of them should pass 'no cup of coffee' laws, laws that prevent any gifts or financial relationships between lawmakers and lobbyists. It's that important."

Just as important to Moe in Minnesota is what he calls the "missing piece of the puzzle" in the new ethics culture--the voters. "If you really want to change the system for the better and keep it that way, we have to get people more involved in it," he says. "We have to reinvent citizenship."

Arguing that simply paying taxes and voting is not participation enough, Moe continues: "There's a McDonald's mentality in the country right now that makes people think they can get any problem solved by driving up to the window. But it isn't that easy. In fact, that kind of attitude has helped to create a lot of the cynicism. These people have to come into the system and make democracy work. And the more that happens, the less we'll have to worry about ethics reform."

Garry Boulard, a free-lance writer from New Orleans, La., writes for The Christian Science Monitor and the Los Angeles Times.