What one's important relevant experiences are depends on the issues of the day. For the next several weeks, I suppose my most relevant legislative achievement is this: I invented the term "governmentally mandated benefits" and convinced the House to stick it in the Ethics Code. Without any active role on my part, the Senate accepted the decision of the House on this issue, and Governor Casey signed it into law.

This all took place in 1989. State Rep. Jeffrey Piccola had won a previous vote which sought to require disclosure of worker's compensation payments, and/or unemployment compensation payments, and/or welfare payments (I forget which). Piccola was deeply hostile to all these benefit programs, and it was clear that he and some other Republicans were substantially motivated by a desire to keep recipients of such benefits out of public office to the degree possible.

So, as one of a series of amendments designed to improve the operations of the State Ethics Code, which I had actively supported the establishment of in 1978, I proposed that there be no requirement to disclose "governmentally mandated benefits." I thought it would be easier to win a vote with this terminology than by listing the benefit programs individually. It was easier: the House voted overwhelmingly or unanimously for this language.

I remember mentioning some individual benefit programs--like worker's compensation, unemployment compensation, social secuirty disability-- in the ensuing debate as to what the language meant. There were many more important issues to be considered that day, and the House accepted my explanation, voted for the amendment, and then moved on to other amendments.

No one raised the question as to whether a pension was a "governmentally mandated benefit," and I did not address that issue in debate. Nor did I give any thought to that issue at the time I introduced the Ethics Code amendment. I have noted that courts have at least once said in dictum (the Paris Frazier case) that pensions are not a "governmentally mandated benefit," and it is the case law that counts.

But I can see that, from the point of view of the Brady campaign, arguing that pensions are a governmentally mandated benefit would require a much less drastic reversal of case law than would seeking to base a defense on Brady's late (but pre-challenge) filing with the State Ethics Commission. The Supreme Court ruled in the Anastasio case that while the Election Code requires the law to be liberally construed allowing candidates to run for office, the Ethics Act requires ethics provisions to be liberally construed keeping ethics law violators off the ballot if they fail to comply.

There is a great cultural chasm between the instinct of lawyers not to disclose information ("anything you say can be used against you," reads the Miranda warning in part) and the demand of the Ethics Act for full disclosure of income, financial interests, income-producing assets, and debts. A totally disproportionate percentage of all candidates thrown off the ballot for failure to disclose have been lawyers. The statement yesterday that the Brady campaign relied on legal advice not to disclose his pension is an example of the limited ability of much of the legal profession to come to grips with the ever-increasing demands for transparency in government.

The legendary lawyer Clark Clifford once got a long letter from a client asking what he should do about a potential legal problem. Clifford wrote him a two word letter--"Do nothing"--and then sent him a large bill, which the client quickly paid.

For free, as a member of the Pennsylvania Bar as well as a state legislator, I offer this legal advice to aspiring candidates: Disclose everything. If there is any ambiguity in the instructions, disclose. You have a constitutional right to remain silent on areas of potential criminal liability, but you do not have a constitutional right to run for office--only a constitutional right not to be discriminated against in your run for office on the basis of race or other categories covered by the 14th Amendment.

I empathize with the argument that all these disclosure requirements are meaningless technicalities. A lot of what goes under the name of ethics today is meaningless technicalities. Ethics today is all too much about paperwork, and all too little about actually improving the quality of government.

It has been said repeatedly that the three most important principles of real estate valuation are location, location, and location. Similarly the three principles of governmental ethics today are paperwork, paperwork, and paperwork. If that is not what the public desires, if that is not what is in the the most public interest, then then people should dare to think about whether paperwork is really the key to a more ethical government.