If ethics dispute is nothing personal, it still hits close to home
Not always, but sometimes TV can do a better job than a newspaper by showing rather than telling.
For instance, Clark County Commissioners Tom Collins and Chris Giunchigliani were interviewed on “Face to Face with Jon Ralston” recently and Ralston commented about their body language as they sat side by side, turned slightly away from each other.
Collins, wearing his trademark cowboy hat, immediately slung his arm over Giunchigliani’s shoulder and she cuddled into his armpit. Collins waited a bit and carefully lifted his arm off the back of her chair, looking like he was trying to avoid cooties. She looked relieved.
I howled. It was so funny and fake, it could have been a bit on “30 Rock.”
Let’s call these the ethics wars of 2011. After discovering Collins was hired to lobby in a bus contract dispute, Giunchigliani pushed to change the county’s ethics ordinance. She wants to clarify that county commissioners cannot be paid consultants or lobby governments in Clark County. And she wants that restriction expanded to include any government or agency throughout Nevada.
Lobbying the Legislature, as Collins has done, would be out.
This would severely restrict Collins’ consulting business, which hasn’t been as successful as his now-defunct electrical business.
“I made zero in 2011 and $6,000 in 2010,” he told the Nevada Ethics Commission.
When he was elected six years ago, Collins said he and his wife “had an electrical company grossing well over a million dollars a year.”
Now Collins wants to change the county ethics policy in a way that would restrict her from going back to work as a public school teacher for one year after she leaves the commission. He believes all public-sector jobs should be included in the one-year cooling off, not just jobs pertaining to Clark County.
The cooling-off period as written says a commissioner can’t appear before the commission “or any agency or department of Clark County” for a year after leaving the office.
For example, Commissioner Larry Brown now works for the Las Vegas 51s baseball team as a community relations manager. But a strict interpretation of the policy means he couldn’t return to the Las Vegas Valley Water District where he once worked, unless he waited a year.
“I think the cooling-off period should be the same for all or not at all,” Collins said.
Collins and Commissioner Steve Sisolak say the cooling-off period and other restrictions regarding commissioners should be extended to a commissioner’s spouse and household members.
Sisolak proposed language making the spouse and household member subject to penalties and fines, despite a warning from the county’s chief legal adviser Mary-Anne Miller about enforceability problems with private citizens.
Sisolak offered language that would block Giunchigliani’s husband, political consultant Gary Gray, from being paid by “any private person or business entity to represent or counsel that person or business entity on any issue pending before Clark County.”
Although I opined Saturday that provision was aimed at Gray, he emailed me from Europe: “I don’t think that’s aimed directly at me.” He already rejects all requests that he lobby the County Commission. He has been a political consultant for Collins and Sisolak, but does not believe the proposed language prohibits that.
Collins’ amendments would hurt Giunchigliani where it hurts — her wallet. Of course, her amendment does the exact same to Collins.
“To my knowledge, Chris and I are not having anything personal in this thing,” Collins said.
However, when the ethics amendment was first proposed and Collins said he wanted all public-sector jobs included in the cooling-off period, she snapped at him, saying, “The issue was who we regulate, but if you want to prohibit me from going back to the classroom, that’s fine.”
Personally, I don’t think she meant it.
Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.
