Senate drifted in by ethics snow job Legislators will ignore the public interest in ethics just as long as you let them 6/15/89 Question: How long can the Alaska State Senate get away with ducking, covering up and protecting members charged with serious violations of the public trust? Answer: Just as long as you let them. The fact is that the biggest snow job in recent memory is drifting up against the closed doors of the Senate Ethics Committee right now. Hiding behind the technical limitations of an ethics law so weak it ought to seek treatment, members have left unanswered a series of charges as serious as any ever voiced in the legislature. The charges involve the sworn testimony of North Slope contractor Tom Gittins, who said under oath that he'd been involved with Sen. Al Adams in kickbacks, payments, forgeries and lies adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. How can the senators let that alone? We're not talking about picky little complaints of technical violations. Here are some of the specific questions that remain unresolved: * Did Gittins have a contract to pay Adams $60,000 a year and three percent of the work he got from the North Slope Borough? What kind of influence might Adams have exerted to get money for borough projects that could go to Gittins -- and through Gittins, to himself? What does Adams know about charges of a forged change order that lead to a $400,000 Adams contract for a local hire study done for the North Slope Borough? How much work was actually done for that $400,000 -- and was it worth anywhere near that much money? If it wasn't, would that constitute fraud? Did Adams commit perjury when he said in a sworn civil deposition that he got less than $30,000 for the study that actually totaled $400,000? Did Adams submit a false document to the Department of Motor Vehicles claiming to have paid Gittins 13 ounces of gold for a 1979 Ford Bronco? Where's the gold? Why did Gittins buy Adams a new snow machine in 1982? Did Adams get $12,000 from Gittins for three projects the builder got in Kotzebue in the summer of 1981? Did Adams use his legislative influence to seek rules changes that would have increased Gittins' profit on those jobs? Did Adams, as charged, ask Gittins to alter records to obscure payments made during the final splurge of spending okayed in the closing days of the Brower administration in Barrow? The ethics committee says it can't answer those questions because the events happened before the law applied. That's a loophole, pure and simple. If a common criminal got off on a pretext even nearly as flimsy, we'd call it a "technicality" and scream all day for tougher laws and better prosecutors. We should do no less in the Adams affair. Indeed, we ought to do far more. The Senate has all the authority it needs to reconvene a panel to get answers to all those questions. Senate President Tim Kelly could do it tomorrow. The ethics panel chair, Sen. Pat Porchout, could have been screaming for support to pursue the investigation, instead of ducking under the convenient cover of the loophole built into the leaky ethics law. Other senators could be demanding answers. None of that is happening, citizens. That means it's up to you.