Washington Post: A GOP lawmaker wants to repeal child labor laws in his state. He employs hundreds of minors.

Under Indiana’s child labor laws, minors can work for a limited number of hours: 18 hours a week for those ages 14 and 15 and 30 hours a week for 16- and 17-year-olds. Working more than that and into late-night hours requires parental consent. A six-hour work day must include 30-minute breaks.

A new bill would scrap these rules, a move that opponents fear would enable bad actors who expose minors to excessively long working hours. But there’s another factor that has raised concerns: The bill’s author, Republican state Sen. Chip Perfect, owns a ski resort — and he employs hundreds of minors — which has led to questions about his motivations. …

The state’s ethics rules don’t prohibit legislators from sponsoring or voting on bills that would personally or financially benefit them. Instead, they give legislators discretion in deciding whether their stake in a bill amounts to a conflict of interest.

“It’s really just a system of self-policing,” said Julia Vaughn, policy director of Common Cause Indiana, a government watchdog group. “Obviously, the individuals have widely varying abilities to police this . . . widely varying in their sensitivity to what constitutes a conflict or not.”

“In their mind, they’re protecting the institution in that way,” Vaughn added. “I think, long term, just the opposite happens. The institution is hurt when we constantly have these kinds of situations when everybody outside the statehouse seems to see a conflict of interest, but nobody inside the statehouse can see it.”