Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey says last week’s conviction of former state Senator John Ford justifies the investigation he carried out on Ford three years ago.
In February of 2005, Ramsey chaired the Senate Ethics Committee which investigated conflict of interest allegations against Ford.
“We weren’t just plowing new ground, we were on a whole different farm. I don’t think anything like this had ever happened in the State Senate before, or an investigation like this. We realized quickly then that there was something to this, and we actually hired the Attorney General, to do an investigation for that, and we got those results back, ironically, the day before the Tennessee Waltz sting came down.”
That FBI sting trumped the Ethics Committee, which passed off jurisdiction to the courts. Ford was later convicted of taking a bribe from government agents. After the sting, the state legislature pass new ethics laws, but Ramsey says laws aren’t the answer to wrong-doing.
“You can never completely block anybody from doing anything. We have laws on the books against murder, yet we have people murdering every day. I’m firmly convinced that actually, the laws that were on the books even before we passed our new ethics reform, would have covered everything that happened. It was all illegal at the time that he did it, not because we passed the ethics reform.”
Friday’s conviction, Ford’s second, was on the same conflict-of-interest issues that the Ethics Committee investigated.
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Ramsey says the situation is unlikely to arise again.
“We have very good men and women serving in the state legislature. You find something like this going wrong, you ferret it out and you prosecute it. I think that is the case, and I believe now that we’re not going to tolerate anything like this going on in the State Senate, and hopefully, it won’t happen again. “
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