Kansas City Star, Sunday, December 13, 2009
by Steve Kraske, Chief Political Correspondent
Former Missouri lawmaker Brian Yates couldn’t hold back.
Having resigned his seat Dec. 1, midway through his final term, the Lee’s Summit Republican let loose last week with a no-holds-barred assessment of the state of Jefferson City.
Yates, who served seven years and had more than a few run-ins with leaders of his own party, didn’t call the Capitol a political cesspool. But he came close.
Serving in the General Assembly, he said, had become a “scam.”
Almost everywhere Yates looked, there were “eye-poppers” — ongoing activity that had little to do with serving the people but had the FBI snooping.
The 34-year-old lawyer ticked them off: the passage of legislation in exchange for campaign donations, the underhanded dealings of former House speaker Rod Jetton, price tags placed on committee chairmanships, wealthy folks getting all the attention, all that political money sloshing around the Capitol.
“A number of people saw what was going on and didn’t respect what we were doing and who we were doing it for.”
By the end, serving in the legislature had become unbearable, he said.
“I just didn’t have the passion for it anymore because of how Jefferson City had changed.”
In fact, Yates said he had started lamenting the long hours the job required and the days away from home. His input seemed to matter little. Instead, money was king.
“Legislators are supposed to make the state better. But we were getting away from that,” Yates said. “We were dealing with issues that serve the select few, that serve those with a lot of money instead of doing the people’s business.
“It was silly to be away from families … to be down there wasting time. Why were we going down there to participate in this type of scam?”
He’s convinced, but cannot prove, that laws were broken, particularly when it came to swapping votes for campaign donations.
To Yates, the charging of Jetton last week with felony assault against a Sikeston woman was a classic example of the corrupting influence of power. He thought Jetton, an ex-Marine from Marble Hill, “got away from his original principles” as he spent more time with the state’s powerbrokers at dinners and on trips in his tumultuous and highly controversial reign as speaker.
Yates still recalls the first time he began to question GOP leadership. In 2005, Sen. Matt Bartle, a Lee’s Summit Republican, proposed a bill to crack down on the adult entertainment industry. But the measure ran aground after being sent to an unfriendly committee.
Turns out that a timely $35,000 political contribution from the strip clubs to a fundraising committee with ties to a top Jetton adviser was suspected as being a key factor in the bill’s fate.
“That was the first time that it was readily apparent that money could buy direct influence of the speaker,” Yates said.
Jetton denied wrongdoing.
Antipathy between Yates and the speaker grew. Yates became one of a cadre of northwest Missouri lawmakers who regularly tangled with Jetton. The group had ties to political consultant Jeff Roe, who was in competition with Jetton’s consulting firm.
Yates said the rivalry didn’t matter. Unethical behavior is unethical behavior.
“It just seemed to get worse and worse with time,” Yates said.
He didn’t sit idly by. Yates sponsored a bipartisan ethics bill last year that went nowhere.
Yates, who has taken a new position with payday lender QC Holdings in Kansas City, thinks federal investigators may well decide to bring indictments. If that happens, Yates said, he wants to be far, far away from the Capitol.
“If the bomb is dropped this spring,” he said, “it’s going to be a mess down there. And I don’t want to be affiliated with that.”
•••
Missouri ethics reform continues to gain momentum.
A bipartisan effort by Rep. Jason Kander, a Kansas City Democrat, and Rep. Tim Flook, a Liberty Republican, to be unveiled Monday would create several new felony provisions for “pay for play” activity and money laundering.
Now we’re getting serious, folks.
