January 27, 2011 12:32 AM UTC

Accountants Don't Need No Stinking Ethics Classes

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• by: Colorado Pols

One we didn’t want to escape mention, from today’s Durango Herald–with video from the debate in the House yesterday (right):

State Rep. J. Paul Brown made his first attempt to reduce the reach of government on Tuesday with a bid to end mandatory ethics training for accountants.

Brown, R-Ignacio, campaigned on reducing the scope of government. On Tuesday, he tried unsuccessfully to amend a minor bill on certified public accountants to remove the requirement that they take an ethics class…

Brown got support from state Rep. Spencer Swalm, R-Centennial. If people don’t know not to lie, cheat or steal, they won’t learn it at an ethics class, Swalm said.

“Look at the Ten Commandments. Why don’t we have classes where we force professionals to sit down and read the Ten Commandments over and over again? That would do the job,” Swalm said.

We know that Rep. J. Paul Brown very much wants to get the government “off people’s backs,” to the point where he threatened civil war on the campaign trail over mythical United Nations gun-confiscation schemes–but is ethics for accountants really the place he wanted to start? And as for Spencer Swalm, did he really want to call the ethics class for his profession, insurance, “a joke?”

It seems to us this could be interpreted rather uncharitably in both cases.