EDITORIAL: Legislature should support campaign, ethics reform

The Nevada Legislature convenes Monday to start work on an agenda that could change the state forever. Education, labor and pension overhauls. Tort reform. A UNLV medical school. Those policy ideas, proposed tax increases and Gov. Brian Sandoval’s ambitious budget will consume much of the 2015 session.

But lawmakers will have an additional focus: looking out for themselves and preserving the perks of incumbency.

Few bills are treated as poorly each session as those that attempt to create more transparent elections and a more ethical government. Such reforms, if not left to die, are routinely rewritten to accomplish precisely the opposite of what their sponsors intended.

Legislation to prohibit the use of campaign funds for personal expenses becomes a bill to allow candidates to buy clothes with donations. A bill supposedly introduced to address carpetbagging — living outside the district a candidate seeks to represent — actually provided such liars with immunity from judicial intervention. A bill to end the hiding of campaign money became a bill to specifically allow the hiding of funds. And on and on.

We sincerely hope the 2015 session is different, but indifference to the public’s eroding trust in government has long been a bipartisan sentiment in Carson City. Few lawmakers are excited about placing what they perceive as new burdens on themselves. But integrity isn’t a burden. It’s a virtue that requires work.

The Review-Journal’s 25th and final policy recommendation to Gov. Sandoval and the Nevada Legislature: campaign and ethics reform. It’s an agenda we’ve long supported, to no avail.

— Mandate timely disclosure of campaign contributions and expenses. A bill sponsored by Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller in 2013, for example, required all contributions and expenses greater than $1,000 to be reported by campaigns online within 72 hours.

— Compel office holders to report their cash on hand, because unspent donations become invisible to the public under current disclosure requirements. (It goes without saying that the bill was gutted and killed in 2013.)

— Specifically prohibit elected officials from using campaign money on personal expenses. Lawmakers have been caught spending campaign money on rent, groceries, toiletries, housekeeping, clothing, electronics, etc., essentially using donations as personal income.

— Impose “cooling off” periods, barring lawmakers from lobbying at the next regular legislative session after their exit from office. Lawmakers can’t bring themselves to limit their employment options — or those of their successors.

— Create clear penalties for legislative candidates or lawmakers found to not live in the districts they seek to represent. Under the Constitution, the Legislature has the power to determine the “elections, qualifications and returns” of its members, residency requirements notwithstanding. In 2013, lawmakers used that power to seat Assemblyman Andrew Martin, D-Las Vegas, even though a court had disqualified him for living outside the district that ultimately elected him. And last year, two Democratic Assembly candidates were found to live outside the districts in which they ran. Although they lost those races, they could have been seated regardless. The co-equal branches of government are not fully independent branches, and it was embarrassing to see lawmakers in 2013 ignore the order of a sitting judge. Lawmakers must follow the laws they pass. Any legislative candidate who is found by a court to be ineligible for office must not be able to serve in that office. Period.

Are these recommendations futile? Perhaps. But if the public becomes fully aware of bills lawmakers are not passing, and the cynical reasons such reforms die, lawmakers might one day feel enough shame to do the right thing.