Does vote on mega-farms stink?

When it came time last week to potentially make it easier for existing Indiana mega-farms to expand, Rep. Sue Errington decided not to vote on the issue to avoid a potential conflict of interest.

The Muncie Democrat and her family are partners with Creighton Brothers, a large chicken farm in Warsaw. She said she recused herself from voting because she financially benefits from the farming business, also known as a confined animal feeding operation.

But a colleague with similar interests in a large hog farm in White County had no qualms about voting for the legislation.

Rep. Don Lehe, R-Brookston, said he didn’t see it as a conflict even though he owns Lehe Farms, which has a confined feeding operation permitted for up to 1,000 nursery pigs and 1,890 finishing pigs. He said House ethics rules allow him to vote on the legislation because it doesn't uniquely benefit him.

A government watchdog said the varied approaches to ethical issues at the Statehouse show the shortcomings of allowing lawmakers to police themselves.

"There's way too much self-enforcement when it comes to these conflict-of-interest laws for these legislators," said Julia Vaughn, policy director for Common Cause Indiana. "There's often this very wide degree of variation in how people interpret their own conflicts."

She said it seems obvious that legislation that likely loosens requirements for animal farms should be considered a conflict for any lawmaker who owns such a farm.

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Lehe said he was following House ethics rules that allow lawmakers to vote on issues pertaining to their profession as long as the legislation doesn’t uniquely and directly benefit them. He said his vote was “perfectly legal” and “appropriate” — and similar to votes cast by lawmakers in other professions.

“We have teachers that vote on education funding bills,” Lehe said. “We have lawyers that vote on (legislation pertaining to their profession)."

House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said he doesn’t think it was necessary for either Lehe or Errington to excuse themselves from voting.

"With a citizens legislature, (there are) veterans who have to deal with veterans matters, we have real estate agents that are dealing with real estate matters,” Bosma said, “and as long as there is not a unique positive impact on that individual, our rules are very clear that it’s not a conflict, and they’re actually required to vote."

The House Ethics Committee, composed of lawmakers, exists to resolve ethics concerns among colleagues and offers advisory or formal opinions on ethical issues.

But Lehe said he did not consult the panel for guidance on House Bill 1494, which could make it easier for existing confined feeding operations to expand — and limits the number of people involved in such farms that would be required to disclose any past environmental violations. 

Lehe’s vote came Wednesday during a meeting of the House Agriculture Committee, which endorsed the measure on a 7-3 vote. The legislation is now eligible for consideration by the full House.

State representatives and senators are required to disclose their economic interests before each legislative session. If they have a "direct personal or pecuniary interest" in a matter, they are supposed to excuse themselves form voting. 

In 2015, lawmakers revised House ethics laws, making them more transparent. The changes came after then-Rep. Eric Turner, a top House Republican, secretly lobbied against a bill that would have hurt his family's nursing home construction business. An ethics investigation eventually cleared him of any technical wrongdoing. But Bosma later stripped him of his leadership role, and Turner resigned.

Among the ethics rule changes, lawmakers now must disclose family members who are lobbyists and list the financial interests of spouses, parents and children. The law added transparency, but didn't further specify when lawmakers need to check with the ethics committee. 

House Bill 1494 would seem to provide an occasion for lawmakers who own mega-farms to take stock, Vaughn said.

The measure would allow owners to expand their feeding operations by using a permit amendment instead of applying for a whole new permit. Usually when people apply for a confined feeding permit, they have to inform those living less than a half-mile away.

While bill author Rep. David Wolkins maintained that the measure would not change any notification requirements, the bill reads: "The notification requirements of this section do not apply to a permit amendment." 

Josh Trenary, the executive director of the Indiana Pork Producers Association, introduced the details of the legislation during committee instead of Wolkins, and said much of the language is to clarify what is expected of CFO operators. 

“We don’t want to open our members up to an appeal for a relatively small change of a facility," Trenary added. 

Under the measure, environmental reporting requirements also would be eased. CFO operators would only have to disclose environmental violations in the past five years of the owner and those directly in charge of the environmental aspect of the operation. Other senior management and board members no longer would have to disclose any of their environmental violations. 

Vaughn said the legislation — and lawmakers' opposing views on who should be allowed to vote on it — show that current ethics laws are unclear and too open to interpretation.

"I understand this concept that it is a part-time legislature and therefore some conflicts are going to occur," Vaughn said, "but I think they occur way too often in Indiana."