Friday, February 17, 2006

Otter should return money

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Changing his mind and publicly saying so is an admirable characteristic that U.S. Rep. Butch Otter demonstrated in January by dropping his support of a hare-brained scheme to sell U.S. public lands to pay for hurricane Katrina aid.

"I was wrong. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last," Otter wrote in The Idaho Statesman.

Now, as Republican candidate for Idaho governor, Otter has made another mistake that he should correct with the same aplomb and candor as before.

Otter has accepted $6,000 in campaign funds from Sempra Energy Employees PAC even as the corporate Sempra is pushing every political button to obtain approval for a $1 billion coal-fired generating plant near Jerome. Wisely, Democratic candidate Jerry Brady last year returned a $250 donation from the PAC once he saw the pitfalls.

Sempra's unconcealed objective is no secret: to persuade Idaho politicians to approve its power plant. It's easy to conceive of a legislative scenario in which Otter, if elected, could ultimately decide Sempra's fate.

Only the naïve believe that Sempra PAC money sent to Otter doesn't carry any expectations of his help if he becomes governor. Campaign donations are political IOUs, as the widening Washington bribery scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff reveals.

The reasonable suspicion that Otter might eventually be asked to return a favor to a company whose plant plan is generating growing hostility isn't worth the loss of public trust the $6,000 donation creates.