A small step against consolidated rule

Up in Austin and Battle Mountain, Kathleen V. Ancho is secretary to the Lander County sheriff. She is also considering a run for the Lander County Board of County Commissioners.

If elected, Ms. Ancho sensibly wondered whether the state Ethics in Government Law might forbid her from holding both posts simultaneously. So she contacted the Nevada Commission on Ethics, seeking an advisory opinion.

After chewing over the matter for a year or so, the Ethics Commission handed down a ruling dated Sept. 14, to the effect that such double-dipping would indeed be a problem.

Although the Lander County Commission does not directly supervise the sheriff or those in his office, the commissioners do "establish a merit personnel system for the county," the Ethics Commission found. The County Commission also "approves all staff for county officers or department heads and sets classifications, grade, step and salary." Although the commission "at this time ... declines to make a bright line rule against public employees, in general, serving on public bodies that oversee some aspect of the public entity that employs the employee" (more's the pity), nonetheless, "if Ms. Ancho were to serve simultaneously as a county commissioner and remain employed as Secretary to the Sheriff, she would be placing herself in a situation where she would be serving two masters, which may create, at the very least, an appearance of impropriety," the Ethics Commission now rules.

She could also violate a separate state statute if she ended up being covered by a collective bargaining agreement between her employer "and the Commission of which she would be a member," the commission found.

"Therefore," the Ethics Commission rules, "based on the facts and circumstances surrounding Ms. Ancho's case ... if elected, she has the choice of either serving on the County Commission, or as secretary to the Lander County Sheriff, but not both."

The advisory ruling has few teeth -- purposely so, given the Ethics Commission's studious avoidance of laying down any "bright line rule." It may be tempting for those who favor the ongoing double-dipping that has become so commonplace in the Silver State to shrug and ask "So what?"

For one thing, financial "conflicts of interest" are really the lesser of the two concerns here -- the greater concern being Article 3, Section 1 of the state constitution, which bars anyone who sets policy in one branch of government from receiving pay from another.

The point of that provision is not just to prevent a judge or sheriff from getting elected to the state Legislature and voting to raise judges' or sheriffs' salaries -- including his or her own.

If that were the only concern, the standard, "I'll abstain if that comes up" would suffice.

But it doesn't suffice, because that would do nothing to slow the concentration of government power in ever fewer "good-old-boy" hands, which was the founders' real concern.

In fact, this decision from the Ethics Commission is laudable, and may be more useful than the cynics understand, because -- like a besieging army driving their trenches ever forward -- it marks another incremental advance against the culture of double-dipping.

For decades now, it's been considered "business as usual" for Nevada government employees and their spouses -- with the backing of their public employee unions and associations -- to seek election to the lawmaking bodies that lard up the payrolls of those very same government bureaucracies.

The forces of bureaucratic privilege have powerful champions -- as became obvious back in 2004, when a somewhat naive Brian Sandoval argued his first case as attorney general before the state Supreme Court, asking the justices for a firm ruling that the state constitution's separation of powers clause prohibits legislators from holding jobs in other branches.

Poor Mr. Sandoval -- since "promoted out of the way" to a federal judgeship. He actually expected the political animals on the state's highest court to put the letter of the Nevada Constitution ahead of the vested political interests of those who favor ever larger government?

In its unanimous ruling in Heller v. Legislature, the court laughed Mr. Sandoval and the constitution out of court.

But the Ethics Commission's new ruling regarding Kathleen Ancho marks a modest step back in the right direction. "Consolidation of power" was an enemy of freedom that received considerable attention in the Federalist Papers. Perhaps the day will yet come when such things are read again, in Carson City.