KNXV-TV in Phoenix investigated how state lawmakers often sit on committees that make decisions about issues that affect lawmakers' non-legislative pay:
The ABC15 Investigators went to the House and the Senate, and looked at disclosure statements, committee assignments, and votes for Arizona's 90 legislators.
Since they are only part-time and make just $24,000 a year, legislators have other jobs.
And we found nearly a fifth of them are on committees that could influence their paycheck.
Representative David Bradley's business, La Paloma Family Services, runs foster care and group homes. It relies on state contracts.
Bradley also sits on the House Human Services Committee, where DES comes for legislative action. It doesn't hand out those foster care contracts, but it handles law making for the department that does.
He said he does not see any conflicts with what he does for a living and what he does on the committee, and that he's only recused himself from one vote in six years.
I like that the station tells readers how to get financial disclosure statements on their state lawmakers. The station's Web site also lists, one by one, each potential conflict it found.
Several years ago, the Center for Public Integrity
compiled a list of every conflict of interest disclosure filed by state lawmakers nationwide. While the list is outdated now, I am linking to the old version to give you an idea of what disclosure forms look like and what you might find if you went looking.
