Opinion ID: 2396134
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Regulation 5014 Is a Valid Ethics Provision

Text: Regulation 5014 does not apply to any and all public boards, commissions, agencies, and authorities. Rather, by its terms, it is limited to executive entities; that is, (a) public bodies within the executive branch of state government  and (b) state executive, public and quasi-public boards, authorities, corporations, commissions, councils or agencies. Regulation 5014(2) (emphasis added). Although Regulation 5014 does not contain a further definition of what constitutes an executive governmental entity, those governmental entities that function in a non-executive capacity, that are legally independent of the executive department and are non-partisan in the composition of their membership, or that function solely as advisory boards or as legislative commissions, do not qualify as executive entities and hence are excluded from its scope. Thus, for example, the commission itself  notwithstanding its investigative and prosecutorial functions  would not constitute an executive entity because of its constitutionally mandated, independent non-partisan status. R.I. Const. art. 3, sec. 8. [6] Nor would an administrative agency like the Commission on Judicial Tenure and Discipline (CJTD), see G.L.1956 chapter 16 of title 8, qualify as an executive entity because it functions merely as a reference source for this Court. See In re Almeida, 611 A.2d 1375 (R.I. 1992) (holding that the findings and recommendations of the CJTD, which acts as a reference source for this Court, are not binding on the Court and do not usurp its inherent powers). And inter-governmental advisory entities like the recently formed Administrative Adjudication Court Task Force are also non-executive in character and function. Therefore, while legislative membership on or legislative participation in the selection of the membership for such entities may raise other legal questions (for example, in the case of the commission, whether such legislative involvement complies with the constitution's independent non-partisan mandate, R. I. Const. art. 3, sec. 8, or in the case of the CJTD, with the constitution's distribution to and vesting of the judicial power in the judicial department, art. 10), such activity would not run afoul of Regulation 5014 nor would it violate the constitution's distribution of the executive power to the executive department and its vesting of the chief-executive power in the Governor. Although a particular office's or administrative entity's executive status vel non should be decided on a case-by-case basis, it would appear, as a general proposition, that many administrative agencies and other non-advisory governmental entities and positions that the Legislature creates to carry out, regulate, administer, or execute some aspect of the laws of this state are either within the executive branch of state government or are otherwise predominately executive in character and function. Therefore, they would be subject to Regulation 5014 and to the Governor's chief-executive power and hence beyond the scope of whatever appointment powers the Legislature may enjoy. Accord Federal Election Commission v. NRA Political Victory Fund, 6 F.3d 821, 827 (D.C. Cir.1993) ([T]he mere presence of agents of [the Legislature] on an entity with executive powers offends the Constitution.). But others, like the CJTD, may not be. Compare, e.g., Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602, 628, 55 S.Ct. 869, 874, 79 L.Ed. 1611, 1619 (1935) (holding that the Federal Trade Commission is an independent administrative agency that cannot in any proper sense be characterized as an arm or an eye of the executive) with Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 137-41, 96 S.Ct. 612, 691-93, 46 L.Ed.2d 659, 755-57 (1976) (holding that the Federal Election Commission was unconstitutionally composed of legislative appointees). [7] In any event, the scope of Regulation 5014 is limited to executive governmental entities. Therefore, in addition to excluding from its scope any governmental board or commission that functions solely in an advisory capacity, or [that] exercises solely legislative functions, Regulation 5014(2), it also excludes non-executive entities.
In interpreting a constitutional provision that is clear and unambiguous, we must accord its provisions their plain and ordinary meaning. See In re Advisory Opinion to the Governor (Appointment to Fill Vacancy In Office of Lieutenant Governor), 688 A.2d 288, 291 (R.I.1997) (addressing the Governor's constitutional authority to fill a vacancy in the office of Lieutenant Governor). [N]o word or section must be assumed to have been unnecessarily used or needlessly added. Kennedy v. Cumberland Engineering Co., 471 A.2d 195, 198 (R.I.1984). Although the 1986 ethics amendment to the constitution does not define what is meant by a code of ethics as that phrase is used in article 3, section 8, the plain meaning of the term ethics when Rhode Islanders adopted this amendment included the rules of conduct recognized in certain associations or departments of human life. 1 Oxford English Dictionary 312 (1st ed. 1971) (defining ethics). [8] The constitution further tells us that such an ethics code shall include, but not be limited to, provisions on conflicts of interest and on use of position. R.I. Const. art. 3, sec. 8. Accordingly, to establish the rules of conduct for Rhode Island's public officers and employees, the people empowered the commission to adopt provisions on (among other subjects) conflicts of interest and misuse of position that henceforth would constitute [t]he rules of conduct recognized in certain associations or departments of [Rhode Island public] life. 1 Oxford English Dictionary at 312. Moreover, in empowering the commission to adopt an ethics code, Rhode Islanders also expressly authorized the commission to proscribe and punish conduct that might tend to engender conflicts of interest and misuse of government office holders' public positions. Such a construction is consistent with the language in article 3, section 7, of our constitution that public officials and employees must adhere to the highest standards of ethical conduct, respect the public trust and    avoid the appearance of impropriety.  (Emphasis added.) [9] Thus, the constitution endowed the commission with the legislative responsibility to adopt an ethics code that would enable public officials and employees to adhere to the highest standards of ethical conduct and to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Such a code would include provisions on conflicts of interest and misuse of position so that legislators and other public officials could comply with these standards and thereby avoid the appearance of impropriety. Accordingly, the commission was entitled to conclude that, for legislators to avoid the appearance of impropriety as required by article 3, section 7, of our constitution, they would have to avoid engaging in certain conduct and activities that might subject them to conflicts of interests or expose them to potentially conflicting demands on their time, their loyalties, or their responsibilities as legislators. Among the various types of conduct and activities that could result not only in the appearance of impropriety, but also in actual conflicts of interest and misuse of legislative office, would be legislators holding one or more potentially incompatible executive-department positions or otherwise participating in such executive appointments. Such activity could, at a minimum, result in the appearance of impropriety in a state where (1) the executive can do no legislative act, nor the legislature any executive act, Payne & Butler v. Providence Gas Co., 31 R.I. 295, 317, 77 A. 145, 154 (1910) (quoting Thomas M. Cooley, A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations, 242 (Little, Brown, and Co. 7th ed.1903)), and where (2) legislators are forbidden from serving on any boards whose decisions are subject, in some degree at least, to the revisory power of the General Assembly, see, e.g., Opinion of the Justices, 67 R.I. 197, 202, 21 A.2d 267, 270 (1941) (opining that legislators could not serve on the board of elections). [10] Given our constitution's distribution of all the powers of government into three separate departments, art. 5, the separate vesting of the legislative power with the General Assembly, art. 6, sec. 2, of the chief-executive power with the Governor, art. 9, sec. 1, and of the judicial power with the state's courts, art. 10, sec. 1, and given the common-law prohibition on legislators serving in public offices that would be subordinate to or subject, in some degree, to the General Assembly's revisory powers, Opinion of the Justices, 67 R.I. at 202, 21 A.2d at 270 (opining that a member of the General Assembly may not serve as a member of the state board of elections because the decisions of the board    are subject, in some degree at least, to the revisory power of each house of the general assembly), the commission was entitled to conclude that legislators' participation in appointments to various executive entities might lead to or create an appearance of impropriety, if not outright conflicts of interest, with their primary law-making responsibilities. See Cranston Teachers Alliance Local No. 1704 AFT v. Miele, 495 A.2d 233, 237 (R.I.1985) (noting that the government has a strong interest in protecting its employees from entanglements caused by dual positions or even the appearance of such entanglements ) (emphasis added). Just as the decisions of the board of elections are subject, in some degree at least, to the revisory power of each house of the general assembly, Opinion of the Justices, 67 R.I. at 202, 21 A.2d at 270, so too are the decisions, activities, and enabling provisions of the various executive entities subject, in some degree at least, to the Legislature's revisory powers. Cf. In re House of Representatives (Special Prosecutor), 575 A.2d 176, 178-79 (R.I.1990) (opining that legislation empowering the Chief Justice to appoint a special prosecutor would violate the constitution's separation-of-powers mandate because it created the potential for the Chief Justice to serve in dual capacities, thereby threatening the separate, institutional integrity of the Judiciary). Accordingly, such global, prophylactic ethical restraints as those embodied in Regulation 5014 are designed so that public officials not only will avoid the appearance of impropriety and the conflict(s) of interest inherent in holding potentially incompatible public offices, but also will give their undivided loyalty to the duties of their principal elected or appointed office. See Cranston Teachers Alliance, 495 A.2d at 235-37 (upholding G.L.1956 § 17-1-5.1's dual-municipal-office-holding ban  to wit, that no municipal employee may hold a municipal elective office in the city or town in which he or she is employed  because a public employee's right to hold such an elective office is outweighed by the government's interest in preventing a potential conflict of interest). Thus, in my judgment, regulations like the commission's revolving-door ban (discussed below) and its prohibition on legislators participating in executive-department appointments (Regulation 5014) are all cut from the same ethical cloth. [11] Most significantly, they are consonant with the existence in 1986 (and today) of other, similar ethical and legal restrictions that barred and continue to prohibit the Governor, legislators, judges, and other public officials from participating in various types of multiple-government-office holding. [12] In any event, such a regulation plainly qualifies as a provision[] on conflicts of interest and on use of position within the meaning of those phrases as they are set forth in the 1986 ethics amendment to our constitution. 3. The Reasoning of the Justices' 1993 Advisory Opinion Upholding the Validity of the Commission's Revolving-Door Regulations Shows Why the Commission Possesses the Power to Adopt this Regulation In 1993, the Governor asked the Justices of this Court for their advisory opinions concerning whether the commission's so-called revolving-door regulations were constitutional. See In re Advisory From the Governor, 633 A.2d 664 (R.I. 1993). There, one year after opining on the validity of the constitutional provisions creating the commission and authorizing it to adopt an ethics code, the Justices issued yet another unanimous advisory opinion in which they all concluded that the commission's revolving-door regulations were valid. Among the newly created restrictions that these revolving-door regulations imposed on legislators were provisions that flatly barred any member of the General Assembly from seeking or accepting state employment (not held at the time of the member's election) while the member was serving in the General Assembly and for a period of one year after leaving his or her legislative office. Regulation 36-14-5007 (No member of the General Assembly shall seek or accept state employment as an employee or consultant, not held at the time of the member's election, while serving in the General Assembly and for a period of one (1) year after leaving legislative office.). Although nominally directed at individual legislators, the revolving-door regulation also operated to deprive both the General Assembly and the Governor of whatever respective powers they may have enjoyed previously in appointing sitting legislators to various state-employment and consulting positions. In their 1993 advisory opinion, the Justices opined that this regulation was constitutional notwithstanding a multi-pronged attack upon its validity, including its alleged unlawful infringement upon the Legislature's (and the Governor's) historic appointment powers. Noting that this regulation and its concomitant legislation [13] were designed to ensure that public officials adhere to the highest standards of conduct, avoid the appearance of impropriety, and do not use their positions for private gain or advantage[,] [s]ee R.I. Const., art. 3, sec. 7, the Justices stated that such a ban on multiple-government-position holding by legislators and by other public officials was an effective device by which the public trust may be enhanced. In re Advisory From the Governor, 633 A.2d at 671. There is a legitimate purpose in abridging the abuse of public office. The drafters of [this regulation] could have reasonably concluded that the possibility of one's unjustly entrenching oneself in a public position, by moving from one state or municipal position to another, could be greatest for those positions to which [the ban on legislators accepting other government employment] was made applicable. Id. (Emphasis added.) Thus, in 1993, the Justices (two of whom are also Justices of the present Court) unanimously believed that the commission was empowered to adopt a regulation that presumed and predetermined a priori  without any evidence of a violation and without providing a hearing  that every member of the General Assembly who had accepted or who would in the future accept state employment to serve at any public job or consulting position throughout the entire reaches of state government (save for jobs that they held when they were elected) was automatically guilty of a potential conflict of interest or abuse of position. [14] Obviously, this same prophylactic reasoning that the Justices wholeheartedly embraced in 1993 to uphold the revolving-door ban applies with equal force to the commission's ban on legislators participating in appointments to executive entities. In their 1993 advisory opinion, the Justices unanimously characterized the commission's global, prophylactic ban on legislators contemporaneously holding, seeking, or obtaining any employment or consulting positions throughout the entire state government as among the ethical restraints that the commission had adopted validly pursuant to its constitutional mandate to do so. In re Advisory From the Governor, 633 A.2d at 671. Significantly, there was no talk then from the Justices about how the commission could not use its authority to promulgate an ethics code to alter the structure of government or to relegate offending legislators to the category of status offenders. On the contrary, the Justices stated: The drafters [of the revolving-door regulation] may have concluded that the risk of undue influence is great in the positions that it identified.    No government branch is immune from `influence peddling,' and we believe that there was an adequate basis for the ethical restraints imposed.    `The [drafters are] certainly entitled to consider that [e]vils in the    field may be of different dimensions and proportions so that different remedies are required.'    The revolving-door [regulation] rests on a rational predicate and promotes integrity and public confidence in government. Id. (quoting Forti v. New York State Ethics Commission, 75 N.Y.2d 596, 555 N.Y.S.2d 235, 554 N.E.2d 876, 883 ( 1990)) (emphasis added). By a parity of reasoning, we also should uphold the ethical restraint at issue here. First, it too constitutes a prophylactic ban on plural-government-office holding by legislators and their designees, albeit it applies only to appointed, executive positions rather than to all other government-employment or consulting positions, as was true in the case of the revolving-door ban. Second, Regulation 5014's ban lasts for an even more limited duration than the period involved in the revolving-door regulation because the commission's ban on legislators serving on executive entities and participating in appointments to such positions ends as soon as any legislator's service ends rather than continuing for an additional year, as was true for the revolving-door regulation. Third, although the commission cannot assume or controvert powers that are central to the operation of either the executive department or the General Assembly, see In re Advisory Opinion to the Governor (Ethics Commission), 612 A.2d 1 (R.I.1992), the regulation here, as was true for the revolving-door ban, does not deprive the Governor or the General Assembly or local officials of their power to make appointments. As we have stated, the de minimis restriction that is placed on the power to make appointments is temporary and is not seriously intrusive of either the executive or the legislative branch's power. In re Advisory From the Governor, 633 A.2d at 675-76. Here too, the commission's restriction on state legislators participating in appointments to executive entities is de minimis, temporary, and not seriously intrusive upon either the Governor's or the Legislature's powers. First, it is de minimis because it relates only to executive entities that, by definition, were created to carry out and administer the laws that the Legislature enacts and that the state's chief executive is duty bound to execute faithfully. [15] Except to the extent that it expressly provides elsewhere for limited exceptions to its plenary distribution of the chief-executive power to the Governor and of the other executive powers to the other officers within the executive department, our constitution distributes all of the government's executive power to the executive department, art. 5, vests the chief-executive power with the Governor, art. 9, sec. 1, and charges him or her, and not the legislature, with the responsibility to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, art. 9, sec. 2. Thus, this regulation does not impinge upon any core legislative or law-making function and contravenes no other constitutional provision pertaining to the General Assembly. Second, it is temporary in the same sense as the revolving-door ban was so labeled because, like the revolving-door regulation, the ban on legislators serving in such executive capacities or participating in such appointments lasts only for so long as they are legislators  without even tacking on the additional one-year-waiting period applicable to the revolving-door ban. Finally, unlike the revolving-door ban which applied to all government-employment and consulting positions, the breadth of the ban on legislators participating in certain executive-department appointments is narrower, affecting positions in only one branch of government instead of in all three branches. To be sure, unlike Regulation 5014, the commission limited the revolving-door regulation to a ban on multiple-government-position holding by legislators and by other public officials, and thus it did not extend to legislators participating in the appointment of others to state-government-employment and consulting positions. However, if, as the Justices opined in 1993, it is lawful for the commission to forbid legislators from appointing themselves or any of their fellow legislators to any state-government-employment or consulting positions, then I do not believe that it would be unlawful for the commission to preclude legislators from appointing their designees to such government jobs, let alone to just appointive positions within the executive department. In other words, the commission was entitled to conclude that the perceived evils of multiple-position holding by legislators simultaneously serving in executive positions, coupled with the constitutional imperative for the Governor to serve as the state's sole chief executive and to execute the laws faithfully, should not be so easily evaded and/or compromised as by allowing legislators to appoint their surrogates to the very positions that they themselves are forbidden to hold. In sum, if one accepts and agrees with the reasoning of the Justices in 1993, when they unanimously upheld the validity of the commission's broad revolving-door ethical restraint banning legislators (during their service as legislators and for one year thereafter) from accepting any appointments to state-government-employment and/or consulting positions  regardless of what branch of government such a position may be located  then it follows that a narrower ethical restraint barring legislators only from accepting or participating in appointments to executive entities while they are serving as legislators likewise is valid. Since two of the members of this Court have already opined in 1993 that the commission's revolving-door regulation was a valid ethical restraint, [16] both the logic of their reasoning and the interests of consistency argue in favor of a conclusion that the commission's executive-appointment regulation also is lawful. [17] 4. Upholding the Validity of this Regulation Would Not Result in the Commission Possessing a Virtually Limitless Power to Restructure Rhode Island's Government Acknowledging the commission's power to adopt such ethics-code provisions as those challenged here does not mean that the commission's substantive power to adopt ethics regulations will allow the commission to sit as a continuing constitutional convention in which capacity it would have the power to alter the structure of government to comport with its views. Nor will it convert the commission into a paramount fourth branch of government that is limitless in its powers. With all due respect to my colleagues, this parade of baseless bogeymen only serves to demonize the commission by grossly overstating and distorting its limited constitutional power to enact ethics regulations for public officials. First, the commission only may enact rules and regulations governing public ethics. See In re Advisory Opinion to the Governor, 612 A.2d at 19. Thus, it has no authority whatsoever to address other subjects, much less to operate as a continuing constitutional convention. Second, it is subject to many of the institutional checks and balances that serve to limit the powers of any administrative agency. See id. at 18 (pointing out that the commission, like any other governmental body, is subject to many of the usual checks and balances associated with our tripartite form of government, including judicial review of the validity of any challenged regulations, compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act's provisions that are applicable to other government agencies, and the General Assembly's power, subject to the constitution's independent non-partisan mandate, to legislate the composition of the commission, to establish penalties for violations of commission regulations, and to appropriate funding for the commission to function). Third, and most importantly, the commission cannot enact purported ethics-code regulations that would contradict other provisions in the constitution or that would invalidate or render illegal acts that other state or federal constitutional provisions require or expressly authorize. For example, under certain specified circumstances, the constitution requires legislators to participate in electing one or more of the executive department's general officers when an incumbent has become incapacitated, when there has been a failure to elect any one or more of these officers, or whenever a vacancy occurs in these offices. R.I. Const. art. 4, secs. 3 and 4. [18] Thus, the commission could not enact an ethics-code provision that would purport to bar legislators from participating in such elections because the commission deemed such activity to constitute a conflict of interest or a misuse of their legislative office. Similarly, the commission could not prevent the Governor from exercising his or her constitutional power to veto legislation on the grounds that the mere exercise of such a veto power would constitute a misuse of that office. Such a regulation would be contra legem because it would contradict one or more separate provisions of the constitution that expressly authorize such acts, and therefore, it would set standards that seriously impinge upon the executive or the legislative branch's ability to perform the usual or ordinary duties for which each is elected, including the appointment of various officials to public office. In re Advisory Opinion to the Governor, 612 A.2d at 19. In other words, any ethics-code provisions adopted by the commission cannot render conduct illegal that the constitution itself otherwise authorizes or compels. However, if such acts merely would have been constitutionally permissible in the absence of a contrary ethics regulation  but were not required or expressly authorized by some other constitutional provision  then the commission certainly may adopt ethics-code regulations that outlaw such behavior if by doing so it would tend to minimize governmental conflicts of interest and/or the misuse of a public official's position for some improper purpose. Thus, in the case of the revolving-door regulation, before the commission adopted such an ethics restraint, the constitution may well have permitted state legislators to hold one or more employment and/or consulting positions in state government while still serving as legislators. In any event, from time to time, the General Assembly and/or the Governor certainly have appointed legislators to such positions as if they were entitled to do so. Nonetheless, the members of this Court did not deem the commission's revolving-door regulation barring such multiple-position holding to be invalid merely because it altered the then-existing structure of government which allowed legislators to serve in such dual capacities or because the General Assembly's heretofore exercised powers, as vouchsafed to it under article 6, section 10, of the constitution, meant that the commission could not prohibit such conduct. In short, the bottom line legally  then and now  is that historical anecdotal occurrences [concerning the General Assembly's past powers and practices] cannot overcome a clear and unambiguous grant of constitutional power to another constitutional actor, In re Advisory Opinion to the Governor, 688 A.2d at 291, a grant that, in this case, plainly authorizes the commission to adopt such provisions. In 1986, the people of Rhode Island gave the commission a clear and unambiguous grant of constitutional power to enact ethics regulations on conflicts of interest and misuse of office by legislators and other public officials. Indisputably, Regulation 5014 is on these subjects. Thus, even if the opponents of this regulation could establish the existence of a long and incontrovertible record of [h]istorical anecdotal occurrences documenting past legislative participation in appointments to executive positions, they cannot rely upon such historical evidence to trump Rhode Islanders' clear and unambiguous grant of constitutional power to the commission in 1986 to enact ethics-code regulations that would outlaw such occurrences in the future. [19] By vesting the commission with the power to enact substantive ethics-code provisions, the people of Rhode Island necessarily prohibited the General Assembly from continuing to exercise whatever unemunerated but heretofore exercised powers and practices it may have enjoyed previously that would now be inconsistent with any duly enacted ethics-code provisions that the commission chose to adopt on conflicts of interest and misuse of office. Accord In re Advisory Opinion to the Governor, 612 A.2d at 14 (holding that after the passage of the ethics amendment in 1986, the General Assembly is limited to enacting laws that are not inconsistent with, or contradictory to, the code of ethics adopted by the commission). Moreover, the mere fact that one can point to a history of something does not make that something lawful. One need not agree with Voltaire, who once said that history is but a tableau of every crime and catastrophe, L'Ingenu, in Candide and Other Stories 189, 221 (Roger Pearson ed. 1992), or with the great historian of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, who believed that history is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind, Edward Gibbon, 1 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 69 (1959), to acknowledge that the fact that some activity or practice has a history is hardly any guaranty of its propriety or legality. See, e.g., In re Advisory Opinion (Chief Justice), 507 A.2d 1316, 1323 (R.I.1986) (opining that, notwithstanding the 1935 Bloodless Revolution whereby the General Assembly removed all five Supreme Court Justices by a joint resolution declaring their seats vacant, the General Assembly's power to do so had ceased to exist as early as 1854, when the annual session to exercise such a power was eliminated, and [c]onsequently, that event does not serve as a persuasive precedent either historically or legally). One could just as easily proclaim that Rhode Island has had a history of racial, gender, and ethnic discrimination; of recurring government corruption; and of allowing personal conflicts of interest to supersede the public's interest as that its history is one of parliamentary supremacy. But none of these statements tells us one thing that would assure us of the lawfulness of this history, let alone of its desirability. Rather, to decide the questions before us properly, we must transcend the horrid tale of perjury and strife, murder and spoil, which men call history, William Cullen Bryant, Earth, in Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant 163 (1882), and address the legality of the conduct in question. [20] Accordingly, notwithstanding the General Assembly's periodic historic failure to observe the constitutional limitations upon its powers, see, e.g., G. & D. Taylor & Co. v. Place, 4 R.I. 324 (1856) (striking down as unconstitutional the General Assembly's attempt to exercise its former judicial powers), it is nonetheless the rule of law that in the end must prove triumphant if the public interest is to prevail over the mere will of those who would defy the constitution to achieve their ends. Significantly, nothing in the constitution  either before or after the 1986 ethics amendment  authorizes or requires legislators to participate in the executive-department appointments covered by this regulation, much less to accept appointments to such positions. Indeed, to the extent that such participation would interfere or conflict with the Governor's chief-executive powers, and in particular, with his or her constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, R. I. Const. art. 9, sec. 2, the constitution's separation and distribution of powers would bar such participation in any event. See infra part II. Thus, this is not a situation where the commission has attempted to restructure state government by altering what the constitution otherwise mandates. Indeed, far from altering the structure of government provided for in our constitution, Regulation 5014 conforms the structure of state government to what our constitution compels in this respect. Art. 9, secs. 1 and 2. After the people amended the constitution in 1986 to endow the commission with the authority to adopt regulations that prohibit unethical conduct by public officials, it can scarcely be deemed a restriction on the commission's power to outlaw future legislative participation in executive-department appointments that the constitution previously did not forbid such participation in express terms and that legislators in fact participated in many such appointments. Otherwise, the commission would be powerless to enact any meaningful ethics-code provisions if it could only proscribe for the future what the constitution already had prohibited in the past. Because such an interpretation effectively would disable the commission from implementing its constitutional duty to adopt an ethics code for Rhode Island's public officials, I reject it as a facially unreasonable construction of what the commission has been authorized to do under the 1986 ethics amendment to the constitution. 5. The Opinions of One or More So-called Ethics Experts Concerning the Constitutional Validity of Regulation 5014 Should Have No Bearing on Our Responses to the Governor's Questions Opponents of Regulation 5014 seek to make much of the fact that one or more so-called ethics experts advised the commission that it lacked the authority to promulgate this regulation. They even have suggested that the commission's own executive director shared with the commission his personal doubts about the regulation's validity. With all due respect to the individuals who may have expressed such opinions, their advice to the commission should be of little moment to our resolution of the constitutional issues presented in the Governor's requests to us. First of all, in the past, we have not decided constitutional questions by adverting to the opinions of so-called experts hired by one side or another to a litigated controversy so that they can guide us concerning how we should rule on a particular constitutional matter that is before us. Nor would it be a salutary practice for the members of this Court to do so now, no matter how delphic or lucid such expert oracles may seem to be in this or in any other given case. Second, the ethics experts in question have no particular expertise to offer us on the key constitutional issue that we are facing: namely, whether, as a matter of Rhode Island constitutional law, Regulation 5014 is consistent with the power given to the commission in 1986 to adopt an ethics code containing provisions on conflicts of interest and misuse of office by Rhode Island public officials. Although the ethical regulation of public officials is obviously the subject matter of the regulation, the commission's power to promulgate such a rule is primarily a question of Rhode Island constitutional law rather than one involving the parsing of some ethical conundrum. [21] Thus, a parade of twenty ethics experts telling us or the commission that the regulation is or is not constitutional, together with a signed, sealed, and sworn opinion from the commission's executive director advising us (or the commission) of his opinion on this subject should have no more weight than the force of their respective constitutional arguments otherwise would merit. In any event, we are not in the business of resolving constitutional issues by resorting to some sort of self-serving expert weathervane proffered by one party or another to measure which way the gusts of informed opinion are blowing. We are not polltakers or followers, nor should we render our advisory opinions only after holding up a wet finger to the prevailing winds of public or expert opinion. Accordingly, the mere existence of one or more such opinions  pro or con  should have no bearing on the advice that we give to the Governor or on our resolution of the legal questions which he has asked us to answer. 6. The Challenged Regulation Is Similar to Bans on Public Officials' Participation in Multiple-Position Holding that Existed in Other Ethical Provisions When the Ethics Amendment Was Adopted In construing a constitutional provision, this court properly consults extrinsic sources   .    [I]n our examination of the constitution, we must look to the history of the times and examine the state of affairs as they existed when the constitution was framed and adopted. Sundlun, 662 A.2d at 45. When the people of Rhode Island adopted the ethics amendment to the constitution in 1986, other ethics provisions existed that contained language barring similar types of participation by public employees in multiple-office holding. For example, the then-existing Canons of Judicial Ethics  which were adopted [in 1971] in order to provide the judges of the several courts of the state with a proper guide and reminder of the principles which should govern their personal practices in the administration of their offices, Preamble to Canons of Judicial Ethics  barred judges in Rhode Island from serving in various non-judicial positions, see Canons 24A and 28 (barring judges from serving as executors, administrators, personal representatives, guardians, attorneys in fact, or other fiduciaries). The Canons of Judicial Ethics also barred Rhode Island judges from acting as arbitrators or mediators, and from accepting appointments to a governmental committee, commission, or other position that is concerned with issues of fact or policy. Canons 24B and 24C. [22] Accordingly, in 1986, when the framers proposed and the people of Rhode Island adopted a new constitution authorizing the commission to adopt an ethics code containing conflict-of-interest and misuse-of-position regulations, the then-existing Canons of Judicial Ethics included prophylactic restrictions on multiple-position holding by judges  provisions that, like Regulation 5014, barred these public officials from accepting appointments to other government and private positions, and from otherwise participating in certain multiple-position-holding activities. Despite the fact that the then-existing constitution and statutory law did not expressly preclude such multiple-position holding by judges, this Court adopted these ethical restrictions pursuant to its unquestionable legal authority to do so. In addition to the Canons of Judicial Ethics, the federal Constitution itself always has contained so-called Ineligibility and Incompatibility Clauses that bar federal legislators from simultaneously holding any other federal office or position. [23] Indeed, the federal Incompatibility Clause has been dubbed America's constitutional ethics rule. Steven G. Calabresi & Joan L. Larsen, One Person, One Office: Separation of Powers or Separation of Personnel?, 79 Cornell L. Rev. 1045, 1119 (1994) (hereinafter One Person, One Office ). The Framers must have known that the ability of a single person to hold a multitude of lucrative offices, whose duties he could not possibly perform, had contributed to the disastrous inefficiencies of both the British and state colonial governments. Thus, the Framers sought to create a government in which `one person, one office' would be the constitutionally prescribed norm. This norm eliminates severe ethical conflicts of interest when individuals hold two jobs simultaneously. For precisely this reason, many state governments expressly bar dual office holding in their state constitutions. Moreover, at the center of our ethics laws lies a prohibition against holding many public and private jobs simultaneously. This bar, too, has been with us for most of our history. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise today that, for the most part, our national government now conforms quite strictly to the one person, one office ideal.  Id. at 1115-16 (emphases added). Thus, an ethical restriction barring public officials from participating in multiple-office holding is not some new, crazy idea hatched by the commission and embodied in the form of Regulation 5014. On the contrary, from the very founding of this country, colonial Americans resented the piling of `a multiplicity of posts upon one man,' offices that were obviously only a source of wealth and could never be properly exercised, [and] were eager to prevent `any one man  family  or their connections, from engrossing many places of honor and profit.' Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, 156 (1969) (hereinafter Wood). Indeed, with the exceptions of New York and South Carolina, all the state constitutions provided for strict incompatibility between service in the legislative and executive departments as an added precaution against executive manipulation of the legislature. One Person, One Office, 79 Cornell L. Rev. at 1058-59. Such unqualified debarring of the magisterial presence from their legislatures represented for Americans in 1776 the fruits of their knowledge of political science and one of their great achievements in building truly free governments. Wood, at 158-59. Moreover, plural officeholding, an appointing prerogative    was prohibited in various degrees in every state constitution in place in 1787. [24] Theodore Y. Blumoff, Separation of Powers and the Origins of the Appointment Clause, 37 Syracuse L.Rev. 1037, 1052-53 & n. 82 (1987). Accordingly, when Rhode Islanders voted in 1986 to empower the commission to adopt a code of ethics that would include provisions like Regulation 5014, similar ethical restraints also abounded in the federal Constitution, in state constitutions, in statutes, in judicial decisions, and in other then-existing ethics codes. For example: of the forty states that now have a general separation-of-powers clause or provision in their state constitutions, eleven provide only that the powers of one branch of the government may not be exercised by either of the other branches, while the other twenty-nine also prevent individuals from exercising the power of more than one branch at the same time. The rule of one person, one office is here to stay at the level of state constitutional law. America has progressed from a separation of powers to a separation of institutions to a separation of personnel.  One Person, One Office, 79 Cornell L.Rev. at 1155 (emphasis added). Article 3, section 6, of our state constitution provides yet another example of an ethics provision barring multiple-office holding. [25] This clause has long precluded any person who holds an office under the government of the United States or of any other state or country from also acting as a general officer of the State of Rhode Island or as a member of the General Assembly. This Court has held (and members of this Court previously have opined) that the framers designed this anti-conflict-of-interest section in our constitution to secure the undivided loyalty of the state officials who come under its provisions. See Davis v. Hawksley, 119 R.I. 453, 379 A.2d 922 (1977); Opinion to the Governor, 83 R.I. 370, 116 A.2d 474 (1955). Hence, it too constitutes a prophylactic ban on multiple-government-office holding (between federal and state offices) that plainly qualifies as a provision on conflicts of interest and misuse of position. Indeed, as the Canons of Judicial Ethics and the Justices' 1993 Advisory Opinion on the commission's revolving-door ban make clear, there is no reason in law or logic why such ethical provisions, to be valid, must be included in a constitution or in a statute rather than in a duly enacted code of ethics that is authorized to include provisions on conflicts of interest and misuse of public positions. Thus, far from having historically eschewed prophylactic bans on plural-government-office holding, this Court repeatedly has approved of such restrictions when they arise in the context of legal or ethical regulations like this one. See, e.g., Cranston Teachers Alliance Local No. 1704 AFT v. Miele, 495 A.2d 233 (R.I.1985). Indeed, when surveying the extensive menu of various ethical restraints that states have imposed on public officials and employees via constitutional provisions, statutory enactments, judicial decisions, and ethical codes, bans on participation in multiple-office-holding activity have been and continue to represent a meat-and-potatoes staple of such fare. As a result, at least seventeen states disallow some forms of dual service in more than one position within the executive department of a state's government, and at least twenty states specifically preclude the Governor from simultaneously holding another executive office within that state's government. At least nineteen states forbid the dual holding of state and local governmental offices, and twenty-eight states forbid judges from practicing law. One Person, One Office, 79 Cornell L.Rev. at 1154. In addition, forty-six out of fifty states now provide for a substantial measure of judicial-executive incompatibility in their state constitutions. Id. at 1139. Twenty-eight states go even further with the one person, one office principle and extend it to private sector `offices' by explicitly forbidding judges from practicing law. Accordingly, there is an important sense in which one person, one office judicial-executive incompatibility is now firmly a part of America's unwritten constitutional tradition. Id. at 1139-40. Moreover: a rule of one person, one office federal-state incompatibility is virtually mandated in most instances by state constitutional law. Thus, forty-seven out of fifty states have clauses in their state constitutions rendering individuals holding federal office ineligible to serve in their state legislatures. At least twenty-six states forbid persons to serve in the executive department of the federal government while serving in some offices of the executive department of their state government. At least twenty states specifically preclude their Governor from simultaneously serving in the federal executive department. And, forty-one states forbid members of their state judiciaries from holding office in the federal government. Id. at 1151-52 (emphasis in original). Further, given how often, how widespread, and how long states have used this particular type of ethical restraint to curb governmental conflicts of interest and misuse of public positions, it can be said with supreme confidence that after surveying the universe of possible ethical restraints that have been imposed on public officials and employees, perhaps none is so familiar, so used, so ubiquitous, and so characteristic of such regulations as are those that typically involve some type of ban on public officials participating in multiple-office holding, of which the ban at issue here is a garden-variety example. In all of these instances, the Incompatibility Principle forbids government officers from trying to serve two masters at the same time. The rule is: Whatever your constituency, electoral or otherwise, serve it and it alone, while renouncing all others. Id. at 1155-56. Thus, of all the potential provisions that a code of ethics for public officials and employees might include, perhaps none is less surprising or more expected than a bar of one sort or another on the participation in appointments to offices other than one's own. Indeed, it would appear that this type of prophylactic ban on multiple-office holding, like the federal Incompatibility Clause, has long functioned as the paradigmatic type of ethical restraint, one that framers of state and federal Constitutions, statutes, judicial decisions, and ethical codes alike have predictably resorted to time and time again when establishing what conduct is and is not ethically permissible for public officials. The Framers wrote an ethics-rule Incompatibility Clause into the [federal] Constitution with the purpose of stopping corruption, and they ended up foreclosing the emergence of parliamentary government in America, leaving us instead with the congressional committee system. Id. at 1157. As a result, today, the Incompatibility Clause, and the principle it embodies, seems to be the cornerstone of the entire American constitutional structure. Id. Accordingly, the commission has adopted what can be safely called a quintessential ethics-code provision, one that is designed to nip legislators' conflicts of interest in the bud and to halt at the governmental get-go any misuse of their public positions for private gain and advancement before they have any chance to ripen into reality. To accept the opponents' argument that Regulation 5014 does not constitute a provision on ethics at all, but is really an impermissible attempt at the restructuring of Rhode Island government, would be to cut the heart and soul out of such ethics provisions as have been adopted here in Rhode Island and all over the country. And even if one could accurately characterize Regulation 5014 as an attempt to restructure Rhode Island government via a reformation of public officials' ethics, it would appear that such a restructuring is exactly what the framers of the 1986 ethics amendment intended, and precisely what the people of Rhode Island wanted and expected when they empowered the commission to adopt regulations governing legislators' and other public officials' conflicts of interest and misuse of their positions. [26] Thus, when the people of Rhode Island adopted the framers' proposal to empower the commission with the legislative authority to adopt an ethics code, including provisions on legislators' conflicts of interest and misuse of their positions, we must consider them to have appreciated the fact that such provisions likely would restrict legislators and other public officials from participating in certain much-reviled past practices and activities, such as revolving-door employment and multiple-office holding, that tended to expose them to conflicts of interest and to other opportunities for misuse of their public offices for improper purposes. Rhode Islanders in 1986 knew this to be so because other extant rules and regulations governing the conduct of public officials throughout the country  including federal and state constitutional provisions, the Canons of Judicial Ethics, Rhode Island statutory law, judicial decisions, and other ethical codes pertaining to public officials  also contained similar, global-prophylactic bans on public officials' holding of multiple-government positions. Hence, we should deem the people to have empowered the commission to preclude such officials from engaging in certain types of multiple-office holding and from otherwise participating in extra-department appointments to other government positions because such activities would tend to result in at least the appearance of impropriety, if not outright conflicts of interest and misuse of their public positions for improper purposes. Moreover, the framers of the ethics amendment to the constitution did not believe that the commission should have to wait until it could catch one or more legislative foxes with the chief executive's feathers sticking out of their mouths before they could accuse them of a conflict of interest. Rather, the framers believed that, to avoid the appearance of impropriety, the commission should be able to promulgate regulations that would keep legislators out of the executive hen house altogether. [27] Accordingly, they direct[ed] that a code of ethics be developed.    [To] put the responsibility on the [commission] instead of on the state legislature. Now that takes the fox away from the chickens. Constitutional Convention Committee on Ethics at 59-60 (May 22, 1986) (remarks of Delegate Milette). Furthermore, the people of Rhode Island approved the constitutional amendment that empowered the commission to do so. For these reasons, even if the regulation's opponents, let alone myself and the other members of this Court, were all of the opinion that such a scheme is unwise, that it gives the commission too much power, that it restructures what heretofore had been one of the peculiar hallmarks of Rhode Island government (namely, legislative participation in executive-department functions), that it contains insufficient checks and balances against the commission's authority to adopt ethics rules, and that it contravenes the way in which Rhode Island legislators long have been allowed to operate throughout their entire pre-regulation history, none of these objections and/or reservations would entitle us to opine that Regulation 5014 was invalid in the teeth of the constitution's clear and unambiguous language empowering the commission in 1986 to adopt such ethical restraints. As the constitution itself states, `the basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions of government; but that the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. ' R.I. Const. art. 1, sec. 1 (emphases added). Thus, especially in light of the opponents' weighty burden to convince us beyond a reasonable doubt that this regulation is palpably and unmistakably    an excess of legislative power, Sundlun, 662 A.2d at 44-45, I conclude that the opponents have failed to carry their heavy legal load, that therefore the regulation in question is valid, and that its substance falls well within the authority granted to the commission under the 1986 ethics amendment to the constitution to adopt an ethics code for Rhode Island's public officials.