Nevada: still a long way to go on integrity

What?! A D-minus? Really, Center for Public Integrity?

That was Nevada’s grade after an extensive investigation of state corruptibility by the center, along with Global Integrity and Public Radio International. We were marked down when it came to public access to information, lobbying disclosure, ethics enforcement, managing the pension fund and redistricting.

And an accompanying story by ex-Review-Journal reporter Joan Whitely pointed out plenty of reasons for Nevada’s low marks.

For example, it’s true that lobbyists don’t have to report what they spend on lawmakers during the months the Legislature isn’t in session. That’s when Assemblymen William Horne and Kelvin Atkinson took a trip to London at the behest of Poker Stars, where the company apparently persuaded Horne to introduce precisely the bill the company sought.

It was the press — not disclosure — that brought the trip to light. That and the timely indictment of Poker Stars by the federal government ultimately watered down Horne’s bill.

(Oh, by the way, a bill to require interim disclosure was killed in the Assembly after testimony from, among others, Horne. And did you know he’s a candidate for speaker in 2013?)

Whitely notes budget changes made by the Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee “violate, at least in spirit, the principle of representative democracy, as only a handful of legislators serve” on the committee.

Indeed, the IFC itself may be unconstitutional, as it exercises powers granted to the Legislature outside the confines of the 120-day biennial session. A constitutional confrontation over the issue during the administration of former Gov. Jim Gibbons was never joined, so the issue remains unresolved.

And yes, the Legislature has exempted itself from the Open Meeting Law, which requires deliberations on public issues be conducted in public. And there’s more: The state’s Ethics Commission doesn’t initiate investigations of elected officials, and even if it could, courts have severely limited its authority to police lawmakers’ conflict of interest violations. Campaign finance reporting forms — now online and searchable thanks to the efforts of Secretary of State Ross Miller — still don’t require lawmakers to report a cash-on-hand balance at the start of each report. Part-time lawmakers are allowed to vote and even introduce measures that affect their full-time employers, under most circumstances. And the practice of inserting amendments into bills in the closing minutes of legislative sessions — specifically to avoid scrutiny — continues unabated.

So yes, Nevada has some significant problems.

But shouldn’t the state’s voters get some credit for doing the right thing? For example, after Gibbons repeatedly demonstrated his unsuitability for office, did not the (Republican primary) voters show him the door? Didn’t the voters of Clark County end the careers of the G-sting defendants long before they were sent to federal prison? Hasn’t the state’s media done their job ferreting out corruption, malfeasance, nonfeasance or incompetence in the public and private sectors?

It’s not that we should be graded on a curve, it’s that we might deserve slightly better than a D-minus.

The area where Nevada should be graded down is that our myriad scandals have dulled our sense of outrage. We’ve come to accept a certain level of wrongdoing as the norm, and despaired that things will ever change. If all we ever do about corruption is snicker about it on blogs and comment threads, then it won’t ever change.

Put another way: Until elected officials fear that the revelation of an unreported trip to London (and subsequently doing the bidding of your host) is enough to end all hope of a future in politics — to say nothing of leadership — we’ve still got a long way to go.

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