The Hot Seat • Sen. Jack Harper attended the Senate Ethics Committee hearing on July 28.

The Senate Ethics Committee has decided to investigate Sen. Jack Harper in response to another senator's complaint that the Republican from Surprise had committed an ethics violation by conspiring to cut off debate between two Democrats on the final night of the 2008 legislative session.
The Ethics Committee voted 3-2 to pursue the complaint filed against Harper by Sen. Ken Cheuvront, a Democrat from Phoenix. Cheuvront has asked the Ethics Committee to recommend that Harper be reprimanded.
Sen. Jay Tibshraeny, chairman of the committee, scheduled a hearing on Aug. 5 to establish procedures for making opening and closing statements, and for presentation of evidence. The committee will meet again on the morning of August 13 to conduct a hearing.
Tibshraeny, R-Chandler, voted along with Democrat senators Marsha Arzberger and Richard Miranda to conduct an investigation. Republican senators Robert Blendu and Barbara Leff voted against the investigation, saying no ethics violations took place.
Tibshraeny said further discussion is needed to determine exactly what happened while Harper was chairing a Committee of the Whole debate on the night of June 27.
Arzberger and Miranda both argued that a hearing is necessary and that Senate rules had been broken when Harper cut off two Democrats who were discussing excise taxes in an effort to delay a vote on a measure that, if approved by voters, would effectively ban gay marriage in Arizona.
What is certain is that Harper turned off the microphones while Cheuvront was discussing excise taxes with Sen. Paula Aboud. Immediately afterward, Harper implied that it was an accident, but he later wrote in his response to the Ethics Committee that he had done so because Aboud and Cheuvront were deliberately wasting time and had violated Senate rules themselves.
Democrats also have accused Harper of violating Senate rules by ignoring calls for a point of order by at least two Democrats on the floor that night.
Harper's decision to turn the floor over to a fellow Republican facilitated a vote on the marriage measure, which passed with the minimum number of votes needed. Voters will decide the measure on Nov. 4.
Both Harper and Cheuvront attended the July 28 committee hearing, which lasted about 15 minutes and focused on whether to dismiss the complaint or proceed with investigation.
Almost immediately after the hearing began, Blendu offered a motion to dismiss the complaint. He said an ethics violation was not "demonstrable" in this case.
Leff acknowledged that mistakes were made, but she said they fell short of anything that could be characterized as an ethics violation. She said there is a difference between an ethical violation and simply not knowing the rules.
But Miranda said he was concerned about discrepancies between Harper's response to the ethics complaint and what he said on the floor that night. Holding a video copy of the floor proceeding, Miranda said the disc showed Harper saying he had shut off the microphones by accident. "But with the explanation given here, it says it was done intentionally," Miranda said.
Arzberger said an investigation is necessary to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future. She said there were many questions that still needed to be answered, including why the calls for a point of order were ignored.
Harper, who has said the complaint was an orchestrated effort to make him look bad in an election year, released a statement following the hearing in which he argued that his actions were justified based on his understanding of parliamentary procedure.
"When the committee convenes for an investigation, I would hope that they would address the issue of the Senate Rules and Mason's Rules," Harper wrote. "Today's preliminary hearing was anything but addressing the facts in the complaint. 
"Mason's Rules do not say that a chairman must call for a point of order. Under the convoluted technicalities of the rules, I feel that Cheuvront should have relinquished control of the floor. Our Republican staff attorney had researched this, and I trust her judgment."
After the hearing, Cheuvront told reporters: “For the future of this body, we need to make sure that we look into this and that future chairmen… follow the rules and regulations.”
In the complaint, Cheuvront identified Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor as a co-conspirator, but Cheuvront stopped short of filing a complaint against him.
Cheuvront said that’s because he cannot prove that what Verschoor did was malicious.
“All I can say (is) that I saw him supposedly conspiring with Sen. Harper, but we saw what Sen. Harper’s actions were and they were pretty blatant if you go back and look at the tape,” Cheuvront said.
Harper is running for reelection in District 4. He is facing John Zerby in the Republican primary, which will be held Sept 2. Democrat Robert Boehlke is running unopposed in the District 4 primary.