It's good to hear that lawmakers are working on ways to improve the Legislature's weak and in some ways baffling rules on conflicts of interest.

Senate Majority Leader Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, is leading the effort to craft a bill to tighten those rules and provide reasonable checks and balances in a part-time, lay Legislature where virtually all the members have other jobs and relationships that could raise conflicts of interest in voting in the process of lawmaking.

Even the best legislators can run into problems with conflicts. As James Madison wrote, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

Current rules for disclosure of conflicts require no revealing detail. These often-vague admissions are then tucked away on Web pages that can be hard to find. Astonishingly, even where a conflict of interest exists -- say a proposed law governing real estate where the legislator is a real estate broker -- the legislator still has the right to vote on the measure. In fact, the rules require lawmakers to vote. Legislative leaders can call the sergeant-of-arms or the Utah Highway Patrol to track down a lawmaker who tries to duck a vote.

Under the new proposal:

• A legislator could request an abstention for himself or ask that a colleague be barred from voting because of a potential conflict.

• The leadership of the chamber would evaluate the situation. The lawmaker could be barred from voting or allowed abstain. Or the leadership could compel a vote.

• If the lawmaker disagrees with the decision, the question would go to the floor of the body for a vote.

This procedure would improve the process several ways. Chiefly, it takes the evaluation of conflicts out of a lawmaker's own hands. When questions involving conflict of interest are raised colleagues, discussed by leadership and possibly voted on by the House or Senate gets the issue out of the shadows and puts it under a public spotlight.

The bill's sponsors are now wrestling with how to define financial and non-financial conflicts. That effort will help clarify some things, but undoubtedly questions will remain. Citizen legislators have other jobs, which means conflicts could be frequent.

But the whole concept of conflict of interest leaves many gray areas. That's especially true of non-financial questions. To a lawmaker with another career, influence may be worth more than gold, connections more than diamonds. So we doubt that a set of rules will be devised that can nail down all situations. There will be ambiguities that require judgment on a case-by-case basis.

This is OK with us. The proposed rules represent a quantum improvement over current practice.

Would the proposal give too much power to the majority partyfi Through chamber leadership or by means of floor votes, the majority could basically have its way on all conflicts of interest.

This would be true if the process were conducted in secret, but as currently proposed it would be public. As a result of increased light, we believe that political motives will tend to be held at bay.

All in all, Bramble's effort represents a major step in the right direction.