Senator’s husband, a landlord, got pandemic rental aid

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s husband, Paul Masto, received about $27,000 from Clark County in the 2022 fiscal year as a result of a tenant in their rental property seeking federal rental assistance.

Clark County quarterly expenditure reports showed Paul Masto receiving three separate payments from the county in the 2022 fiscal year, totaling $27,395, despite the senator not listing the income from Clark County in her personal financial disclosure.

Although Cortez Masto’s financial disclosure doesn’t specify that Paul Masto received income from the county, it does list the income under a rental property, which is the proper way of filing the form, said Kedric Payne, the vice president general counsel for Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.

“If the county actually hired him, it would go (under the outside income section),” Payne said. “Since he’s not an employee of the county, and the income is coming through as part of the rental property, then yes it should be coming from the rental property.”

Cortez Masto, D-Nev., was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016 and is facing challenger former Attorney General Adam Laxalt in the November midterms.

On Cortez Masto’s financial disclosure, the income is listed as a joint ownership that made between $15,001 to $50,000 in income from a rental property.

The payments — her campaign and Clark County confirmed — came from the Clark County CARES Housing Assistance program (CHAP), which is a rental assistance program for eligible Nevada tenants experiencing financial hardship.

CHAP distributes the federal rental assistance that came from the federal government to Nevada, said Jim Berchtold, an attorney at the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, who has worked closely with CHAP, the county and courts to help tenants stay in their homes during the pandemic.

“The goal was really to keep people in their homes, keep a roof over their heads,” Berchtold said.

People can apply to CHAP if they are behind on rent, and the landlord has to participate as well, he said. The landlord verifies how much money the tenant owes, then verifies they received the money. Clark County then issues a tax form indicating it was received as income, Berchtold said.

Since July 2020, Clark County has provided more than $300 million through CHAP to help residents cover unpaid rent, said Dan Kulin, senior public information officer for the county.

Cortez Masto’s campaign said the tenant, like millions of American households who received rental assistance during the pandemic, received rental assistance during the pandemic between 2021 and 2022 by filling out an application with a landlord and providing identification, their lease, and proof of lost employment.

“During the height of the pandemic, I worked with Republicans to deliver the federal rent relief Nevada families needed to keep a roof over their heads,” Cortez Masto said in a statement to the Review-Journal. “Like tens of thousands of Nevadans, our tenant was out of work and unable to pay his rent, and he worked with my husband to apply for that rental assistance.”

Paul Masto, a former assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Las Vegas office, does contract security work for Merletti Gonzales International, a security service agency, and received more than $1,000, according to Cortez Masto’s personal finance disclosure. Payne said that Cortez Masto is not required to put the exact amount her husband received for his work with the firm.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on Twitter.