Hughes denies any wrongdoing

Ethics hearing sheds some light on timing of complaint

Hearings Monday on Capitol Hill shed more light on the timing of ethics complaints and the behind-the-scenes efforts by Republican leaders to quash those complaints.

At the same time, the testimony to the House Ethics Committee did little to add heft to the complaints against Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper. He is accused of offering up to $50,000 in campaign contributions to former Rep. Susan Lawrence in spring of 2006 if she would either vote for, or simply be absent for, any legislative vote on school vouchers.

The committee wrapped up the testimony on the first charge, that he offered campaign money to Lawrence for her vote — there are six charges total — late Monday afternoon. No decision on that charge was announced, although committee members did have lengthy discussions among themselves after Hughes, the final witness, testified.

In his testimony, Hughes said that he never offered "any amount of money" to Lawrence. Instead, the conversation in which she alleged that he made the offer was one of many he had with her about how to finance a very difficult campaign.

"She came to me to ask for help in finding support for her campaign. We had several conversations about how we could find support for her campaign," he said in the released testimony, which was a scripted opening statement. "The conversation in question was merely one of those conversations."

Hughes said he told Lawrence that Parents for Choice in Education, a pro-voucher group, asked him to "reach out" to Lawrence, and that the group was offering to help candidates with campaign donations if they supported vouchers. But he made it clear he did not ask her to change her vote, only that reconsidering her position might net her campaign support from the group.

The decision by his accusers to bring this forward less than a month before the election was also attacked, again, by Hughes.

However, the testimony of Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, who did not sign the complaint but was the primary person talking to Lawrence about filing it, seems to hint at a motivation for serious ethics reform, not to oust Hughes. She testified Monday morning and released her opening statement to the press afterward.

She said she first heard of the Hughes offer — she characterized it as a bribe from the outset — from Lawrence in late 2006, and at that time decided that major changes needed to happen with the state ethics laws. And finding serious ethical violations would probably be the best way to get them changed.

"My objective, ever since Susan Lawrence first described her experience with Rep. Hughes to me, has been to find support among other legislators for investigating some serious allegations of wrongdoing and support for genuine ethics reform," she said.

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