MISSOURI WATCH: MISSOURI'S POLITICAL LEGACY: ENOUGH BLAME TO GO AROUND

The Sicilian Mafia has an old saying that perhaps should be chiseled somewhere on a marble wall in the Missouri Capitol. Based on years of experience, the Mafioso believe that "Politics and crime -- they are the same." This is a belief shared by the American public and, in recent times, pretty well adopted by the citizens of Missouri.

The record for state government is discouragingly dismal. While the state has thousands of loyal, competent and honest workers, we also have an indicted former attorney general who is doing time in a federal prison, an impeached former secretary of state and a university employee who embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money. We also have a number of elected and appointed officials who are currently being investigated by a federal law enforcement office, while a former state treasurer has uniquely suffered both an indictment and an unindictment.

A casual observer of Jefferson City might ask whether Missouri has any rules or laws against unethical conduct, and of course the answer to that is that our revised statutes have numerous sections devoted to both misfeasance and malfeasance, both of which are against the law in our state. We also have a perfectly good ethics commission, headed by competent and capable officials who do the very best job they can, considering the lack of resources.

There is a hazy connection between this seeming sudden appearance of culpability in the state capital and other events in Missouri. These, although perhaps more indirect than direct in their impact, have nevertheless provided a changed climate that is worth noting in any discussion of ethics, or the lack of it in public life. One is the high cost of gaining public office in recent years, and while this has often been offered as an excuse for questionable behavior, it is also a reason. Candidates must now raise millions of dollars to run for statewide office, and while we have a contested campaign contribution law, the need for large sums to win elections is still with us. More than $12 million was spent in the state's last gubernatorial campaign, an amount that was almost reached in this year's U.S. Senate contest.

Campaign contributions, and their unending quest, are the principal reason Bill Webster is behind bars. They were also the reason cited by federal officials in the Wendell Bailey investigation. And we're not through with these probes into huge sums and their sources.

Still another appearance on the Missouri political scene is voter-sanctioned gambling, which fosters a spirit of recklessness that feeds on the philosophy that money can buy anything, even the neighborhood politician. Because so much money is at stake, gambling interests will not hesitate to use whatever means they have, namely their huge profits, to gain whatever they need to influence government. An adjunct of this philosophy is what brought about the problems now being faced by House Speaker Bob Griffin as well as some of the legislators, state officials and lobbyists who have become members of the current class of candidates for federal indictments.

Big money will sometimes inspire criminality. Those with good memories will remember Charles Keating, the indicted savings and loan owner who took the public for millions of dollars. The best quote from that saga was provided by Keating, when he said, "One question...has to do with whether my financial support in any way influenced several political figures to take up my cause. I want to say in the most forceful way that I can: I certainly hope so."

We will see more, not less, corruption in government as long as private interests have millions of dollars to spend in securing whatever it is they need from public officials. Regardless of how many initiative referendums Missourians approve in an effort to limit campaign contributions, we cannot alter the impact of the high cost of campaigns and the need of candidates to raise this money wherever it is available. We can wish the facts were different, but the Sicilian Mafia recognized a long time ago that they aren't.

Missouri has gambling because voters either wanted to gamble themselves or they wanted a hedge against higher taxes and embraced gambling as their acceptable alternative. As for individuals who will inevitably alter their conduct to meet current conditions, there ' s never been a shortage of this vintage, and there probably won't be in the forthcoming millennium.

Citizens who despair of existing tribulations will ask why the Ethics Commission can't correct the new problems being raised. Despite a 1991 effort to install a comprehensive set of ethics regulations, an attempt that was aborted by a state Supreme Court ruling, the state's existing statutes cannot prevent malfeasance by those in public office. Indeed, the pessimistic among us will declare, with considerable validity in hand, that it is probably impossible to regulate misconduct in every segment of government. Certainly the existing regulations validate this prediction. The principal work of the Ethics Commission is to keep track of candidates' expenses and contributions and to record the declared gifts awarded by lobbyists and consultants who seek special favors.

It is well to bear in mind that the facts presented in these required reports are provided by the recipients in the case of contributions and by lobbyists in the case of gifts. Because of the vast bulk attached to these reports, it is all the commission can do to tally, total and record them.

Despite the culpability of society as a whole, the state faces a very real crisis that threatens to erode, if not destroy, public confidence in government. Nothing could be more harmful to Missouri than this, which means we'd better start looking for solutions before the problem overcomes us.

~Jack Stapleton is a Kennett columnist for the Southeast Missourian.