Passage of question will ensure checks, balances

To the editor:

In response to Glenn Cook’s April 15 column, “Lawmakers craving more power”:

Mr. Cook’s critique concerned Assembly Joint Resolution 5, which will appear as a question on the November general election ballot. The question will ask voters: Should the Nevada Legislature be able to call itself into special session under emergency conditions?

This is a law that most other states have already adopted.

AJR5 contemporaneously relates to the situation in Illinois, where the governor attempted to illegally sell a U.S. Senate seat. The Illinois Legislature became aware of the governor’s illegal actions. The Illinois Legislature convened itself, impeached the governor, and the governor was removed from office. This would not happen in Nevada. It is highly unlikely that a rogue Nevada governor would call the Legislature into session in order to have himself impeached.

Mr. Cook complains that AJR5 would “expand the power of the legislative branch at the expense of the executive branch.” But the Nevada Constitution – like the U.S. Constitution – requires that the government be composed of three independent branches, the executive, legislative and judicial. How can the legislative branch be independent of the executive branch if the executive branch controls the ability of the legislative branch to legislate?

The Nevada governor actually controls the Legislature for 610 days of the 730-day legislative biennium (84 percent of the time).

Mr. Cook states that “voters sided with checks and balances” by defeating a similar question in 2006. The whole purpose of having three independent branches of government is to assure that checks and balances do exist. If the executive branch controls the legislative, then there are reduced checks and balances.

In the Illinois governor’s impeachment situation, a good balance of power existed. If a similar situation existed in Nevada, that balance of power would not exist.

Mr. Cook implies that AJR5 is a partisan Democratic bill. I can assure Mr. Cook that the most vocal and adamant supporters of AJR5 in the Assembly Constitutional Amendment Committee in 2009 were Republicans. The final passage of AJR5 in 2009 was in the Nevada Senate where a majority of the Republicans – including William Raggio, Randolph Townsend, Dean Rhodes, Dennis Nolan, Warren Hardy and Barbara Cegavske – voted for passage.

The ballot question related to AJR5 is important to Nevada. If we had a disaster that incapacitated the governor and the lieutenant governor, if we had a governor or lieutenant governor who committed malfeasance in office, or if we had a Supreme Court justice who committed malfeasance in office, an independent Legislature must be able to act at once.

I urge Nevadans to vote “yes” on the AJR5 ballot question.

HARRY MORTENSON

LAS VEGAS

The writer is a former Democratic assemblyman who sponsored Assembly Joint Resolution 5.