Transparency Review (4/25 - 4/29)

• Despite his resignation, the Senate Ethics Committee still appears likely to release some sort of public statement detailing what it found during the course of its investigation of Sen. John Ensign. The investigation focused on two issues in particular: The $96,000 payment John Ensign's parents made to Doug and Cynthia Hampton and Ensign's role in helping Doug Hampton evade a one-year lobbying ban.

• NPRI's Karen Gray reports on the Nevada Ethics Commission's finding that the superintendent of the Clark County School District "is not a public officer as defined by Nevada's ethics laws, nor subject to state financial-disclosure rules."

• The US Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday regarding a Nevada ethics case that will decide just how much free speech protection elected officials deserve when casting votes. SCOTUSblog has a great overview of the case and how the Court's decision could impact conflict-of-interest statutes across the nation.

• Two campaign finance reform bills championed by Secretary of State Ross Miller were approved by the Nevada Assembly this week. Assembly bills 81 and 452 contain many provisions, including restrictions on the creation of PACs used to circumvent contribution limits and requiring candidates to file electronic campaign reports, respectively.

Campaign finance omnibus bills pass Assembly

Secretary of State Ross Miller's campaign finance reform bills are moving forward.

Yesterday, the Assembly passed AB 452 and AB 81. Both bills include multiple changes of varying merit, but some specific provisions are worth noting. AB 452 requires candidates to file election reports online so they can be easily searchable, and AB 81 restricts the creation of political action committees used to circumvent contribution limits. Perhaps this bill will be referred to as The Rory Reid Bill?

While AB 81 passed by a relatively smooth 32-10 margin, AB 452 passed 27-15, which a mixture of Republicans and Democrats supporting the bill. According to the Nevada News Bureau, the reason for the closer vote was due to a clause requiring a two year "cooling off" period before a former legislator could work as a paid lobbyist. Assemblyman William Horne (D-Las Vegas), was one of the most vocal opponents of this clause, calling it "a fiction" and "prohibit(ing) someone from doing what they're gainfully employed to do."

Knowing Horne's close releationship with PokerStars, it's easy to guess why he'd be against the bill. Maybe he reached this conclusion on his "educational" trip to England?

Assembly using the cover of an 'open' process to play political games

Governor Brian Sandoval (R) will not support Assembly Concurrent Resolution 8, which calls for a two-week "open, fair, and public process" for appointing a replacement for departing Senator John Ensign (R).

Introduced by Assembly Speaker John Oceguera (D, Las Vegas), the resolution also urged Sandoval to "consider the costs" of a special election if he appoints Congressman Dean Heller (R, CD-2) to Ensign's seat. Heller has already announced he plans to run for the Senate in 2012, and if Sandoval did appoint Heller, a special election would be held in CD-2 for Heller's replacement.

This seems like political posturing by the Democrats, and even State Senator Mark Manendo (D-Las Vegas) admitted as much in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, saying:

"It it just another partisan vote on something that has nothing to do with the business of this body."

While an open and transparent process is always welcomed in elections, the process to fill a void in Nevada's Congressional delegation is already quite clear — the governor gets to choose.

It'd be nice if Oceguera and his colleagues "consider[ed] the costs" of other pending matters, such as the state budget.

Transparency Review (4/18 - 4/22)

• Despite revelations about Rory Reid's creation of nearly 100 shell PACs and lawmakers taking undisclosed trips on PokerStars's dime, the prospects for strengthening Nevada's campaign finance laws still appear questionable.

• NPRI's Steven Miller writes about Assembly Bill 433, which would remove hurdles preventing individuals from simultaneously being employed by the executive and legislative branches of Nevada government — even though such “double-dipping” represents a clear constitutional violation.

• A former Bush White House staffer reflects on the level of transparency and openness in the Obama White House.

• The Los Angeles Times wins a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its reporting on the Bell, Calif., salary scandal from last year. The investigation led to criminal charges against former city manager Robert Rizzo and seven other former city officials.

• Following the legislative defeat of the DISCLOSE Act, the White House is drafting an executive order that would compel companies seeking government contracts to disclose campaign contributions to groups that air political ads.

Lawmakers return campaign contributions from online poker sites

Following the indictments of several online poker websites for bank fraud and money laundering, several Nevada politicians announced they're planning to return campaign contributions received from the companies.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, among the Nevada politicians who received campaign contributions from poker websites are:

Assembly Speaker John Oceguera (D): $10,000
Former Gubernatorial Candidate Rory Reid (D): $10,000
Governor Brian Sandoval (R): $10,000
Assemblyman William Horne (D): $7,500
Assemblyman Kelvin Atkinson (D): $5,000
Lt. Governor Brian Krolicki (R): $3,000
Treasurer Kate Marshall (D): $2,000

It's a nice gesture by these politicians, although a few of them got a paid trip out of the companies.

Transparency Review (4/11 - 4/15)

A beach in
the Bahamas

• Last year, the Legislative Counsel Bureau gave the okay to three Nevada lawmakers to take trips paid for by Internet poker company PokerStars because of the likelihood that online poker would become an issue in the upcoming legislative session. Assembly members William Horne, D-Las Vegas, and Kelvin Atkinson, D-North Las Vegas, spent 2 1/2 in London while Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, was flown to the Bahamas to meet with the company. Maybe I'm looking at this wrong, but wouldn't it make the most sense to forbid these trips precisely when companies might have future business in front of the Legislature? I wonder what will happen when Nevada's brothel industry has some upcoming business in front of the Legislature. I bet that will be a pretty popular "fact-finding" mission.

• Steve Sebelius calls for a full-time, professional legislature to help reduce potential conflicts of interest between legislators and industries in the state.

Clark County District
Attorney David Roger

• The coroner's inquest, the procedure that gained valley-wide attention following the officer-involved shootings of Erik Scott and Trevon Cole, would be scrapped under a new bill introduced in the Legislature and supported by the Clark County District Attorney and the local police union.

• Jon Ralston laments the sorry state of Nevada's campaign finance laws and wonders if incumbents will ever accede to more transparent state elections. And to highlight just how important campaign finance transparency is, here is his follow-up to last month's story on former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rory Reid creating nearly 100 shell PACs to circumvent campaign donation limits.

• The Assembly Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections narrowly approved a major campaign finance bill last week sought by Secretary of State Ross Miller. The bill would move filing deadlines up and make contribution-and-expense reports electronic. A provision instituting a two-year cooling-off period for former lawmakers before they could lobby the Legislature drew some criticism from Assemblyman James Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas, because it might deter qualified people from running for office.

• James Huffman makes the case (click the first link) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that campaign finance laws requiring donor disclosure actually work to harm challengers and protect incumbents. Huffman, the Republican nominee in Oregon's U.S. Senate race last November, says that donors often wished to support him but worried about the repercussions once their donations would become public knowledge. The Sunlight Foundation offers a rebuttal and notes the public is the best judge of how political contributions affect our politics.

• The Center for Public Integrity isn't impressed with the White House visitor logs. A review of the logs finds the "event" description blank for over 200,000 visits; names included of people cleared by the Secret Service who never actually showed up; and hundreds of thousands of names included as part of guided White House tours.

PokerStars covers lawmakers' 'educational' trip

Apparently, state lawmakers are allowed free trips overseas, as long as the trips are "educational and fact finding."

At least that's the case according to Brenda Erdoes of the Legislative Counsel Bureau, who approved trips paid for by PokerStars for Democratic lawmakers Kelvin Atkinson, William Horne, and Steven Horsford. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the lawmakers traveled to London and the Bahamas last year to meet representatives from the online poker website Pokerstars. Erdoes told the RJ:

..[T]he trips paid for by PokerStars were permissible because of the likelihood of online poker becoming a legislative issue.

Since the trip, Horne has sponsored Assembly Bill 258, which would regulate online poker, and none of the lawmakers were required to disclose the costs of their trip or report it as a gift in financial reports.

Ultimately, lawmakers received free trips, and got away without having to reveal the trips' value.

Transparency Review (4/4 - 4/8)

Michael Roberson
One of two
Senators in Clark 5

• Clark County's two "dual" state Senate districts are likely to disappear following this year's redistricting process, the Nevada News Bureau reports. The districts -- Clark 5 and Clark 7 -- are represented by two Senators apiece in the Nevada legislature. Every other district is represented by one Senator. The anomaly arose after a Supreme Court decision held state legislative boundaries had to be roughly equal in population. Instead of adding more districts to account for the change, the Nevada Legislature created multimember districts.

With the legislative session rounding the halfway mark, here are some transparency-related bills making their way through the Legislature:

• Sen. Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, has introduced a bill that would would make state contracts more transparent and increase government efficiency. Highlights include "[requiring] government contracts to be put out to bid rather than rolled over year after year to the same contractor," "[requiring] all fees charged to the public in government contracts to be disclosed by the contractor" and "[requiring] an annual report to the state on sole source contracting by agencies, which would then be provided to the Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee."

Marcus Conklin

• Assemblyman Marcus Conklin, D-Las Vegas, wants the state Controller's office to post "tables, graphs and explanatory descriptions" along with the raw numbers of the state's revenues and expenditures.

• Finally, Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, is trying to limit the amount state and local governments can charge for public records. NPRI's Karen Gray testified during a hearing for the bill about how she has often encountered cost discrepancies for public records.

• The heads of two large journalism organizations have penned a Washington Post op-ed accusing the Obama administration of failing to meet its own transparency standards. They focus on the administration's underreporting the extent of the Gulf Coast oil spill last year; the FDA forbidding reporters from seeking outside experts regarding changes to the medical device approval process; and how upwards of a third of FOIA requests go unanswered.

• NPRI's Kyle Gillis writes about the creation of a state Senate Ethics Committee after nearly half the session has expired. The committee was created following inquires by the Las Vegas Sun.

• Former U.S. Sen. John Ensign aide Doug Hampton has pled not guilty to seven counts of violating conflict-of-interest laws, The Hill reports.

• Recognizing the role the internet plays in government transparency, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., introduced this week the Public Online Information Act. POIA, as it is called, would ensure public records already held by the government also be made available online. The Sunlight Foundation put together a short video explaining the law:

Halfway through session, state Senate creates ethics committee

For the state Senate, forming an ethics committee halfway through session is a case of better late than never.

According to the Las Vegas Sun:

Despite being midway through the legislative session, the state Senate had not formed an Ethics Committee to accept and review complaints against its members.

That changed Tuesday afternoon, after the Las Vegas Sun asked about the committee.

Senate leadership moved quickly to name members and a chairman, Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas.

Still, 57 days of the 120-day session passed with the public having no official channel through which to file a complaint against a state senator.

According to the Sun, the Senate finally created the committee after Senator Allison Copening, D-Las Vegas, introduced seven homeowner-related bills even though she is a member of several homeowners associations, raising conflict-of-interest questions.

Comparatively, the Assembly formed an ethics committee "earlier this session."

Whether the Senate Ethics Committee will actually hear any ethics complaints is another story, but at least they're taking steps towards policing themselves...even if session is nearly halfway over.