When former Indiana Department of Education communications chief David Galvin was caught striding through the public-private employment revolving door in full gallop, his rationale was illuminating about civic morals in the state.
"I don't understand the big deal," Galvin told the Associated Press of the new job he got from a contractor for which he arranged a $573,000 taxpayer contract. "I listened to the people who do know the law and followed their guidance."
Welcome to Indiana Political Ethics 101.
Underneath the occasional public perturbation in karma, Hoosiers probably believe their government might be inept, but at least it's honest in a Forrest Gump sort of way.
Of course my dimmer view of Indiana's performance might be entirely wrong.
So we flip out our handy loose-leaf binder on Wretched Government Crookedness and turn to the Center for Public Integrity, a non-denominational watchdog that spanks all evildoers regardless of party.
I would have given Indiana a C-minus on historical performance. The Center for Public Integrity gives Indiana a D-minus, which is in the lowdown-trifling range of skunkery.
It's worse than it seems. That's the grade for 2015 after the Legislature launched the year promising to mop up ethical messes and install new protections for the public. Half the senior legislators in 2014 seemed to have been involved in under-the-table deals and shifty conflicts.
Here's the essence of provable adherence to scruples in Indiana state government. There isn't much.
And here are the rules that guarantee you won't be ripped off. There aren't really many of those, either.
For at least 40 years — the same span I have been watching Indiana government — there is very little sign that Hoosier public officials have been embarrassed about their own sticky fingers. But they do not like rules banning such stickiness because that would be the intrusive government regulation you hear so much about.
There is no discernible difference based on party affiliation. The GOP has pretty much owned the state for 12 years; so they've had more opportunity to plunder.
Galvin was an information tech guy who worked for state Superintendent of Schools Glenda Ritz. He helped broker the IT deal with AT&T software contractor N2N and then bailed out and took a job with N2N two months later.
You're supposed to wait a year, but, hey, he wanted to move closer to his significant other. Hormones won that battle.
If you're paying attention, not only did Galvin violate state conflict laws (he said someone in the inspector general's office told him it was okiedokie) but this internet application cost $500,000 plus.
Makes you wonder who was working for whom.
Not coincidentally, someone blew a loud whistle on Galvin. Payback is heck. He's the one who threw the ethical flag on Ritz's predecessor, Tony Bennett, who left both his heart and his ethical sensitivities in San Francisco. So while Democrats were chortling and preening that Bennett's office violated no-political-work-on-state time rules, Ritz's house was being stunk up, too.
State Republicans now are demanding a full probe of Ritz's office. And by probe, I think they mean the way alien space abductors do it. Can't say there's much argument against that.
The lesson is that someone is always watching the morality watchers.
The Legislature had promised 2015 would be the year of truthful truthiness. Oh well.
Overall, Indiana earned a 2015 score of 62 of out of 100, a grade of D-minus, which was 29th in the country. We're not a very honest country.
Indiana earned Fs in the specific categories of public access to information, political financing, state budget process, judicial accountability, ethics entities and civil service oversight. The only Bs were for state pension systems (B+) and internal auditing practices (B-). They were orderly about state cash before they stole some of it.
By comparison, Illinois got a surprising D plus, though state government was in a coma most of the year and unable to do as much damage to integrity as you'd expect.
The least honest, least open, least trustworthy state government in America was Michigan. The tap water in Flint didn't help.
Only three states earned as high as a C, and 11 flunked — Michigan, Nevada, Louisiana, Kansas, Maine, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming, Delaware and Pennsylvania.
The pattern everywhere is similar. Legislators work deals with lobbyists from which only they profit, keep what they do as secret as possible and never allow anyone to hold them accountable.
Even the Center for Public Integrity is discouraged by the trends. Mister Gump is as crooked as everyone else.