History and odds against reform

There are virtually no good reasons to reject the package of campaign-finance reforms that Assembly Republican leader Pat Hickey outlined on Monday.

But there are plenty of bad reasons to reject it, and that’s almost assuredly what will happen when Hickey’s list of good ideas recycled from past legislative sessions hits the sausage grinder in Carson City.

First, Hickey is targeting the mother’s milk of politics, money. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle would rather stare into the noonday sun (on eclipse day!) than introduce greater transparency into accounting for campaign cash.

Second, Hickey is a Republican in the Democrat-dominated Assembly; his bills have as much chance of becoming law as those suggested by members of the media.

Third, Hickey ensured his proposal would get an icy reception when he pointed out several recent Democratic campaign-finance scandals. (He noted the unreported trips to London, paid for by the Internet gaming company PokerStars, taken by two Democratic Assembly members, and state Sen. Steven Horsford’s junket to the Bahamas. Hickey mercifully left out Horsford’s aborted plan to give big donors access to committee chairs at a nice dinner.)

None of those are reasons to kill Hickey’s ideas. On the list:

• Real-time campaign contribution reports, filed electronically to the Secretary of State.

• Requiring lawmakers to report how much money they had on hand after an election, to accurately determine their cash-on-hand at the beginning of the next election cycle.

• Reporting of gifts from lobbyists and donors during the period when the Legislature is out of session.

• Allowing the secretary of state to audit campaign contribution reports.

• A “cooling off” period before a legislator could become a lobbyist.

Almost all of these things have been proposed before (some stretch back to the time when Dean Heller was secretary of state!) And all have been rejected, some on the thinnest of pretenses, but always because lawmakers simply don’t want the scrutiny.

“This is a challenging issue, no doubt about it,” says Hickey. “I realize it’s probably not going to go anywhere unless it has bipartisan support.”

Perhaps. But recall that it was a Democrat, state Sen. Sheila Leslie, who last session introduced a bill to prevent accepting gifts when the Legislature wasn’t in session. That bill passed the state Senate unanimously, but was killed by majority Democrats in an Assembly committee. If Democrats won’t even pass a bill by one of their own, what chance does a Republican have to pass similar legislation?

There are two ideas embraced by Hickey that aren’t going to fly, and shouldn’t. One would be to limit the amount of money or in-kind contributions coming from corporations, unions or PACs to candidates. Those limits would probably not survive legal scrutiny in a post-Citizens United world.

Another idea — to move the state’s primary back to September — is equally flawed. Hickey says Nevadans don’t like to watch political TV ads, and a shorter campaign might be more civil and leave fewer wounds to heal when it comes time to legislate. Really? (Besides, voter turnout nearly doubled from the August primary in 2008 to the June primary in 2010.)

It would be a good thing if the Nevada Legislature embraced and enacted Hickey’s reform package. Then again, it would have been a good thing if the Nevada Legislature embraced these ideas when they were first proposed, years ago. The odds, and history, are against anything different happening this time around. And that’s too bad, since there is virtually no good argument against them.

Steve Sebelius is author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.