Council hopefuls: No need to limit the pool of candidates

Hardly a municipal election goes by without seeing a planning commissioner, council staffer or some other City Hall insider ask Las Vegas voters for a promotion.

Planning Commissioner Ric Truesdell and Anthony Ruggiero, an assistant to Councilman Stavros Anthony, both ran for City Council in the recently concluded Ward 2 special election. Both lost. Earlier this year, Planning Commissioner Byron Goynes challenged Ward 6 Councilman Steve Ross in a recall election. Mr. Goynes lost. And last year, Adriana Martinez, a liaison for Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian, and Planning Commissioner Steve Evans ran for the Ward 3 council post. They lost to former longtime state lawmaker Bob Coffin.

Power tends to build ambition.

Mr. Coffin, however, has a problem with these recent council races. He says the city’s influential appointees end up approaching the people they oversee or assist for campaign contributions, providing opportunities for intimidation. At the very least, the situations create potential conflicts of interest.

So Mr. Coffin wants to bar planning commissioners and liaisons from running for City Council. Already, city staffers must take an unpaid leave of absence to run for elected office. If they win, they must resign from the city. And planning commissioners must quit that panel to take a council post. But Mr. Coffin wants them to resign from their posts before they even begin campaigning.

“If you were a person seeking not just a favor but justice from your local government, why should you have to look at the person across from you and say, ‘Have I got to contribute to this guy?’ ” Mr. Coffin told the Review-Journal.

Mr. Coffin’s well-intentioned idea might have stronger legs if the influence he wants to limit had a better track record in elections. A liaison hasn’t been elected to the council since Ricki Barlow won his Ward 5 seat in 2007. And former Planning Commissioners-turned-Councilmen Larry Brown and Gary Reese are long gone from City Hall.

Of late, voters have consistently rejected insiders loyal to the existing bureaucracy and gone with outsiders, instead. The campaigns were nasty, but voters saw through the mud to make reasonable, informed decisions. We’re hesitant to support any measure that limits voters’ choices in candidates, no matter how unsavory the process might be.

Of far greater concern to voters should be the existence of so many “liaison” positions in the first place. These posts, often little more than ward-heeling patronage jobs, cost Las Vegas taxpayers between $70,000 and $120,000 per year in total compensation, when the public already pays part-time council members more than $70,000 in annual salary. If council members can do without liaisons for months at a time while these staffers chase another job, they’re making a case for doing away with the positions altogether.