Two state lawmakers are enthusiastically pushing for nuclear power in Utah. The trouble is that they are interested parties who stand to make tons of money either personally or on behalf of an employer.

Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, is chairman of the Public Utilities and Technology Committee. His regular job is executive director of the Kane County Water Conservancy District.

Rep. Aaron Tilton, R-Springville, is the committee's vice chairman and an owner of Transition Power Development. His company wants to make a bunch of money by building a nuclear power plant in Utah. Water is required for the enterprise, and it would be supplied for $1 million a year by the agency Noel heads.

Both men also serve as members of the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee, which has examined witnesses with regard to nuclear power in the state.

The conflict is obvious in Tilton's case, but he can't see it.

"I really don't have a conflict of interest, because I'm not a regulated utility," he has said.

Huhfi What does regulation have to do with conflicts of interestfi (Head scratch here.) We thought conflict of interest meant that a person is in a position to exploit public office for personal gain. By this definition, whether or not he has yet voted, Tilton has a conflict.

Tilton's company isn't a public utility, but it aims to acquire a license to build the $3 billion nuclear plant. This sounds pretty lucrative. We don't know what Tilton's business operating margins might be for a project like this, but let's throw out a number for perspective: A profit margin of only 2 percent on $3 billion is $60 million. This is real money.

Noel said his dual roles posed no conflict because "I work for the water district as a paid employee." That's a better excuse than Tilton's, but the whole thing still seems a bit too chummy -- Tilton the industrialist and Noel the prospective water district rainmaker.

Under current rules in Utah's Legislature, a lawmaker can pretty much brush off such conflicts. While there are rules for disclosure of conflicts, they require no revealing detail; and the interested legislator can still cast a vote. If voters don't like this, they have to wait for the next election.

Keeping the public's business above board should be easier than that.

Currently, rules say that a conflict of interest exists when a legislator "reasonably believes" that it does. This standard offers huge loopholes. It makes the legislator the one to decide what's right. And that's wrong. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, "No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgement, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity."

The rules need to be rewritten to provide clearer definitions of what constitutes a conflict of interest, and to clearly lay out voting restrictions that may be imposed on any legislator found to have a really substantial conflict.

Each chamber's ethics committee needs to play a stronger, more formal role in deciding which relationships constitute conflict and at what level.

At the moment, individual written declarations of conflict of interest are often vague. Tilton, for example, filed a declaration about his ties to Transition Power a few days before a newspaper broke the story. Until then, his declaration had listed merely the "pharmacy" and "electric power generation" industries.

While such declarations can be found on the Internet, they don't really jump out as they should. Lawmakers should be required to list specific companies, ventures or other potential conflicts, and to describe the precise nature of the conflict. And they should do so within a painfully short time of entering any such relationship.

Declarations should be prominently displayed. We suggest a link on the Legislature's home page to an index of conflict declarations, listed by legislator's name.

Incredibly, current regulations say that a conflict of interest in no way impedes a legislator's right to vote. In fact, the rules require a vote from any legislator present. This needs to be corrected so that those with substantial conflicts are barred. By the same token, legislators should be allowed to honorably abstain in cases in which a conflict isn't clear but might be perceived to exist.

Utah has a part-time, lay legislature, unlike some other states with full-time, professional lawmaking bodies. As such, we have a relatively open gate for potential conflicts of interest. Utah legislators are regular people with regular jobs. Like the rest of us they need to make a living, which may involve relationships with individuals or companies that seek government action.

With this in mind, we believe that the regulation of conflicts of interest within the Legislature should be handled by means of carefully drawn rules and the good judgment of legislative leadership. In some cases, a conflict may not be enough to warrant the barring of a vote. In others, the bar should fall automatically.

Clearly, it is time for both houses to take the ethics bull by the horns and wrestle the details to the ground.