Moose meat: Arberry’s lobbying deal gets cooked

Poor Morse “Moose” Arberry. He can’t buy a break.

Arberry endured about a quarter century as a state Assemblyman, doing countless favors for his friends and playing the good Democratic soldier. Now he can’t even cash in on the deal by following the time-honored Nevada tradition: Namely, trading his Assembly experience for a lucrative lobbying job.

Now that three Clark County Commissioners have told the Review-Journal they won’t vote to hire Arberry as a district and justice court lobbyist, he’s sunk – at least until one of his friends bails his boat. The scuttled proposal called for paying Arberry $124,000 over two years, including $10,000 a month when the Legislature is in session.

Commissioners Steve Sisolak, Chris Giunchigliani, and Rory Reid told the R-J’s Scott Wyland they can’t sign off on the deal. Of the remaining commissioners, only Arberry’s friend Tom Collins was available – and he thought it was a great idea!

Setting aside the shoddy ethics of the arrangement isn’t easy, but for now I want to focus on something else: Namely, the absurdity of hiring a lobbyist to hustle on behalf of the courts or the county commission at a time like this. Are local government department managers really so swamped that they can’t represent the best interests of the county? Have former longtime members of the Assembly Collins and Giunchigliani really forgotten how to the game is played in Carson City? Of course they haven’t.

Arberry is getting a thorough scolding from the press and that figures to be about all the punishment he’ll receive now that he’s out of office.

The fact he planned for a lobbying life after the Legislature is pretty obvious and hardly surprising. And his friendship with former legislator and District Judge Gene Porter makes the attempted arrangement all the more suspicious.

Legislators have been doing this for decades in Nevada. In fact, of the veterans who have left Carson City in recent years, it’s hard to find one who isn’t lobbying or hasn’t at least considered it.

A cooling off period would be great, but I wonder whether such a movement would gain any steam with the people it’s meant to police.

My biggest problem with legislators happens when they’re in office. So many have such cozy relations with lobbyists that it makes it appear they are in some sort of apprenticeship program.