Members of the Texas Legislature often pay their staff members with campaign money, a practice that some ethics gurus say poses a potential conflict of interest.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/04/18/campaign-funds-prop-lawmakers-capitol-operations/

So reports the Texas Tribune (see link).

I get where the ethicists are coming from.

I’ll say up front that I’ve never given a dime to any candidate for public office in Texas – or in Oregon, for that matter, where I was born and where I came of age. But if I had given money, I would expect a certain kind of return for my investment in the political process.

Supplementing staffers’ salaries with campaign cash isn’t something I’d want my candidate doing with my money. I would rather the candidate use that money to promote issues and enact legislation that I would want enacted, or use it to defeat legislation I don’t want put on the books.

State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, dips into his campaign chest regularly. He told the Tribune he wants to attract a top-quality staff. Offering more money is an attractive inducement, he said.

Maybe. But does he stipulate up front that’s one of the areas where he’ll spend contributors’ money when they give it? I’ll bet not.

But here is where the ethics argument begins to stick. Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, does see the campaign cash supplement as a potential conflict of interest by giving lobbyists and their employers added muscle. “It’s just another way in which the lobby runs the Capitol,” said Jillson told the Tribune. “They provide the lawmakers with walking around money and staff support.”

“Ethics in government,” sadly, has become almost something of an oxymoron in Texas. Isn’t there a way to clean up this mess?