Now that the animal cruelty bill he drafted has passed in the Legislature, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel says he will have more time to focus on other issues, including ethics legislation.

McDaniel says today the current draft of his ethics bill needs more work.

“I took a long look yesterday at the bill in its current form, and I don’t like much of it, so it’s almost like we’re starting fresh,” he said.

McDaniel says key provisions of the legislation, which may be in the form of one bill or multiple bills, include “doing something about absentee lobbying, improving the public’s ability to use technology, online reporting, so they can see what lobbyists are spending, and then also putting a cooling-off period in the law for not just elected officials but department heads and other state officials, when they leave office, to when they get to come back and lobby their former colleagues.”

McDaniel says he expects the legislation to be filed in February.

Tags: animal cruelty, Dustin McDaniel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under General, State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.