GOP leaders want more done on internal ethics investigations

New House Minority Leader Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, joined Senate GOP Majority Leader Ron Ramsey in giving a sneak peek at their legislative agenda — while promising they won’t let up on investigations into colleagues.

Ramsey, R-Blountville, said his Senate Ethics Committee isn’t finished with its look into Sen. Jerry Cooper’s real estate deal. And he said he’s not happy with Senate Speaker John Wilder’s changing stance on his role in helping Cooper get a loan at his bank.

For his part, Dunn said he wants to see the House look deeper into a $200 gift that Rep. Lois DeBerry, a Memphis Democrat, accepted from an undercover FBI agent posing as an executive.

Dunn was picked by House Republicans on Monday night to replace Rep. Tre’ Hargett.

Hargett announced he was resigning as he considered leaving politics for a job as a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist. He changed his mind on the lobbying job, but stepped down from his leadership role anyway.

Dunn and Ramsey sat side-by-side Tuesday, with Ramsey saying they “agree on most any issue you can think of.”

With the legislature stuck in the shadow of the ongoing “Tennessee Waltz” bribery sting that has netted five former or current lawmakers, the Republican leaders said ethics laws and investigations under legislative rules will remain a top priority.

The pair gave a peak at their upcoming legislative agenda, which they said will be called the “Tennessee Trust.” They promised it will be a unified Republican plan and will include everything from ethics to charter schools.

Ramsey said it will focus on shedding more “sunshine” on the system, removing exemptions to the open meetings laws, making more legislative records open to the public and doing a better job of publicly recording committee and floor votes on the Internet.

The plan will also offer health care and education changes.

In the short term, though, it is the work of Ramsey’s Senate Ethics Committee that could make waves.

Ramsey said he was not satisfied with the work of a subcommittee that decided earlier this month to take no action on Cooper, who is named in FBI court documents as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a fraud trial.

“The decision was to not make a decision, and I think we need to make a decision,” he said.

Ramsey said he may hire an outside lawyer to gather more information in the case, like he did when the panel investigated Sen. John Ford. The panel didn’t reach a conclusion in that case before Ford resigned in the wake of his Tennessee Waltz arrest.

The expanded look could include the role Wilder played in helping Cooper get a loan in the real estate deal that is now in federal court.

At first, Wilder said he talked with Cooper about the deal and who to talk to at his bank. Wilder changed his mind last week, and said he never talked to Cooper.

“That concerns me to say the least,” Ramsey said. “‘Were you involved in the loan or not involved in the loan?’ Those are the type of questions we need answered.”

Republicans pressured DeBerry into stepping down as co-chairwoman of the Legislative Ethics Study Committee after she said she accepted the $200 gift from was an undercover agent posing as an executive of E-Cycle Management Inc., a company concocted by the FBI as part of its sting.

“I think where there is a concern like this, we need to answer it,” Dunn said.

DeBerry has said she did “nothing that I believe to be wrong, illegal or immoral in relation to this incident.”

The GOP leaders didn’t address criticism that Republican state Sen. Jeff Miller of Cleveland needs to provide more details on a $1,000 cash campaign contribution he took from the fake FBI company.

Neither Miller or DeBerry have been charged in the FBI investigation.