Transparency Review (2/21 - 2/25)

• Former lawmaker-turned-lobbyist Morse Arberry has admitted he violated state ethics laws when he signed a contract to lobby for the Clark County District Court while still serving in the Nevada Legislature. He will pay a $750 fine and avoid a public hearing. His contract with the Clark County District Court fell through once Arberry's conflict of interest was brought to light. He is currently a registered lobbyist for Nevada Youth Care Providers. Looks like the man trying to strike while the iron was hot got burned.

• The Nevada Policy Research Institute is proud to announce the launch of TweetNevada, a website that makes it easy for citizens to stay informed about the goings-on in Carson City during the 2011 legislative session. You can read the press release here.

• The video of the week award goes to Jonathan Humbert and the I-Team for their must-watch report on continued waste and questionable spending at the LVCVA. They even put together a search engine so you can see for yourself how the LVCVA spends its money.

• Sen. Harry Reid has called on the Nevada legislature to abolish term limits, saying they create a "vacuum" of institutional knowledge that gives power to special interests and unelected lobbyists.

• Ten Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill -- AB184 -- that institutes a "cooling off" period for former legislators and state officers before they can lobby the legislature.

• Earmarks are dead! Long live earmarks! The Hill reports that Sens. Boxer (D-Calif.) and Inhofe (R-Okla.) are asking senators to submit specific requests for the upcoming Water Resources Development Act. While Boxer and Inhofe are careful to avoid the word "earmark" in their letter, Steve Ellis with Taxpayers for Common Sense says it's still de-facto earmarking. It'll be interesting to see who President Obama agrees with and if he'll make good on his promise to veto any bill containing earmarks.

• The Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College has put together an informative website examining how redistricting will play out in each state, namely who will control the process. It's pretty interesting that of the five states that use "Commission Control," four are West Coast states.

• Politico reports that Obama administration aides are holding meetings with lobbyists off-site in order to keep records of the visits off the White House visitor logs.

Brothels aren't the only things Harry Reid wants abolished

In his Tuesday address before the Nevada state legislature, the Senate Majority Leader called for ending term limits on state officials.

"We don't need artificial term limits," Reid said during his speech. "After all, we already have natural ones. They're called elections."

Even with 31 new lawmakers in Assembly and Senate, Reid referred to term limits as restrictions that "...don't limit terms, they limit our ability to move forward."

Nevada voters approved term limits in 1994 and 1996, and term limits enable new voices to enter the legislature. Given Nevada's nearly 15 percent unemployment rate, the state could use fresh ideas in Carson City.

Transparency Review (2/14 - 2/18)

• Fallout from the sick leave scandal in the Clark County fire department continues to spread. County commissioners are now looking for reimbursement from the firefighters' retirement program for increased contributions made because of sick leave abuse.

• TransparentNevada has released 12 years worth of operating budgets for the Nevada System of Higher Education to educate the public on the true fiscal state of Nevada's higher education system. My colleague Victor has a bit more to say about it here.

• Secretary of State Ross Miller has introduced two bills to reform the campaign finance system in Nevada. AB81 requires candidates to file expense reports before early voting begins and AB82 requires candidates to file their campaign contribution and expense reports electronically to make them easier for the public to view.

• The Las Vegas Sun reports that former CSN construction chief Bob Gilbert will spend one year in jail for using his position to take equipment and manpower to build a "8,200-square-foot house, a 2,500-square-foot guesthouse, stables and a lighted basketball court on more than four acres in Kyle Canyon."

• In a victory for transparency advocates, a federal judge has ruled that unsearchable PDF documents do not meet FOIA requirements. As someone who has dealt with unsearchable and hard to parse PDF documents in the course of building TransparentNevada, I'm glad this ruling came down. In this day and age, the only reason to produce unsearchable PDFs is to make your operations opaque to the outside observer.

• Think you can do a better job of redistricting than your elected officials? Well now's your chance. Dave's Redistricting is the best redistricting app I've come across. It incorporates real states and real population counts to make the exercise as life-like as possible.

• The Sunlight Foundation has launched an exciting new project that compiles state legislative data and makes it available in an easy to use format. TransparentNevada is still exploring it, but it already contains some good work with Nevada's legislature. We might be incorporating it into the site soon.

• TechPresident looks at Congress's role in standardizing governmental transparency requirements at both the federal and state level.

Campaign finance reform laws introduced in Legislature

Last Friday, Secretary of State Ross Miller introduced AB81 and AB82.


AB82 is similar to the question Transparent Nevada asked candidates last year about requiring candidates to file campaign contributions and expense reports electronically so the public could view them. This would make public information more accessible.

AB81 requires candidates to to file expense reports four days prior to early voting. Currently, candidates file reports seven days prior to primaries and general elections, which means early voters know less than those who vote on election day.

The Nevada News Bureau reports that the bills seem to have bipartisan support as both Assembly Speaker John Oceguera (D-Las Vegas) and Governor Brian Sandoval (R) supporting campaign finance transparency. If these bills pass, Nevada may improve its 'F' grade on campaign reporting.

Transparency Review (2/7 - 2/11)

• Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller is urging lawmakers to reform campaign disclosure laws, which would make Nevada elections more transparent. The first proposed reform -- searchable campaign finance data -- is almost exactly what TransparentNevada asked candidates about on our 2010 transparency survey.

• Government websites tend to have a reputation of being clunky, hard to navigate and often out of date. Nevada's Division of Budget and Planning is a perfect example of this. That's partially why I have been so impressed with NELIS -- the Nevada Electronic Legislative Information System. It does an excellent job tracking all proposed bills, committees and Legislators during this session. It's a very slick website that shows that technology done right is a boon to transparency in state government.

• House Speaker John Boehner has rebuffed C-SPAN's request to install cameras in the House that would capture lawmaker reactions during speeches on the floor. Former speakers Pelosi and Gingrich also rejected similiar requests from C-SPAN. The Washington Post notes that the current camera system will likely remain as it is, because it is in the lawmaker's interest for the cameras to stay soley focused on them. If the cameras were allowed to pan away from the speaker, it would show them talking to an almost entirely empty chamber.

• The Hill reports that military budget experts don't think that the recently enacted earmark bans in the House and Senate will dramatically alter military spending in congressional districts.

Will budget cuts hurt the Ethics Commission?

State offices are taking a cue from NIMBY and forming NIMO: Not In My Office.

On Tuesday, the Nevada Commission on Ethics told the Senate Finance Committee that Governor Sandoval's budget cuts "could hurt public confidence in elected officials."

Specifically, NCE head Caren Jenkins pleaded for no more cuts to her department, which currently has a staff of five and would receive a 26 percent cut from the general fund if Sandoval's budget is approved.

Given the national mood during November's election, it seems unlikely that showing fiscal responsibility would "hurt public confidence in elected officials," especially since polls already show low approval ratings for public officials. While the 2011 Legislative session is only three days old, it will be interesting to see how public officials plead their case to avoid budget cuts to their office.

Reid finally sees the light on earmarks

Harry Reid finally abandoned ship. A day after Senate pro tempore Daniel Inouye (D-HI) announced his support for an earmark ban, Reid "reluctantly" announced he'd support a moratorium on earmark bans, saying he "would agree to take a timeout for a year."

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, said appropriations bills for fiscal 2010 contained 9,499 earmarks worth $15.9 billion. Reid ranked eighth in Senate spending, having a hand in 168 earmarks totaling $267.6 million, according to the group.

With a diet so pork-heavy, it will probably be a difficult year for Reid to curb his appetite. It is encouraging, however, to see him come around on this issue and support an attempt to cut frivolous government spending.

Odds and ends

Here are some interesting transparency-related articles from the past few weeks. Enjoy:

• The Cato Institute's Jim Harper argues that Republicans in the House should embrace new technology when publishing bills online.

• SessionAccess.org looks to be a great resource for keeping track of news coming out the upcoming Legislative session.

• Should we expand the House of Representatives? A New York Times op-ed argues yes, noting that we've gone from one representative for every 60,000 citizens in 1787, to one representative for every 200,000 citizens in 1913, to one representative for every 700,000 citizens today. A smaller ratio of representatives to citizens, they argue, would enable more accountable government and reduce the power of lobbyists and special interest groups.

• The Sunlight Foundation looks at President Obama's recent State of the Union address and finds his leadership on transparency issues is "slipping."

• House Ethics committee Chairman Jo Bonner (R-AL) concedes that most lawmakers privately wish to abolish the Office of Congressional Ethics but that "political realities" prevent them from doing so.

• Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has sent subpoenas to the Department of Homeland Security over their alleged politicization of FOIA requests.

• Politifact rates as "stalled" a promise by the Obama administration to institute transparency reforms when dealing with military contractors.

Is Harry Reid the last man standing on earmarks?

Yesterday, The Hill reported Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), chairman of the Senate spending panel, announced his support for the proposed earmark ban:

"The handwriting is clearly on the wall. The president has stated unequivocally that he will veto any legislation containing earmarks, and the House will not pass any bills that contain them,” he said.

Inouye, the president pro tempore of the Senate, joins the growing list of lawmakers who support a ban on earmark spending. This leaves Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) even more isolated in his opposition. Eventually, Reid will have to make a choice between joining the new Congress in this small commitment to fiscal responsibility or continue earmarking his pet projects onto bills.

Released emails burn county firefighters

A smoking gun, in e-mail form:

Some Clark County firefighters appeared to have worked with their supervising officers to improperly use sick leave, according to e-mails obtained by the Review-Journal.

And no firefighter or department manager has been fired or punished for misusing the sick leave system, county and union leaders said.

The e-mails show that some firefighters worked with supervisors to arrange sick calls, sometimes months in advance, for vacation rather than for medical problems.

These e-mails provide further support for Commissioner Sisolak's claims that county firefighters have routinely abused the sick leave system.

A report on alleged firefighter sick leave abuse will be presented to the County Commission later today. We'll bring you the report once it's released.

Still no end for Ensign

The book isn't closed on Senator John Ensign's ethics case. The Politico is reporting that the Senate Ethics Committee has appointed a special counsel to aid their investigation of Nevada's junior senator. The Ethics Committee released a statement explaining the reasoning behind the special counsel investigation:

"The purpose of a preliminary inquiry is to determine whether there is credible evidence that a violation within the Committee's jurisdiction has occurred."

Politico notes the significance of a special counsel appointment, citing the special counsel investigation of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in 1997. This does not appear to be a perfunctory hire by the Ethics Committee, and since they are enlisting a special counsel, the committee must feel there is some substance to Ensign's case.

While Ensign was cleared by the Justice Department in December, the Senate committee has yet to reach a verdict. Regardless of the final verdict, it's encouraging to see the Senate investigate its membership and not let possible ethics violations be swept under the rug.