EDITORIAL: Governor agrees to pay fine to settle dubious, partisan probe

Gov. Joe Lombardo ate a $5,000 fine last week in order to make an ethics complaint go away. That’s unfortunate, because the case was a vast overreach with little merit.

Four years ago, the Nevada Commission on Ethics opened a probe into Mr. Lombardo, who served as Clark County sheriff before he sought the state’s highest office. The complaint centered on the fact that he had worn his uniform — including gun and badge — while campaigning for governor. State statutes prohibit “a public officer or employee” from using “the public officer’s or employee’s position in government to secure or grant unwarranted privileges, preferences, exemptions or advantages for the public officer.”

The provision is intended to prevent elected officials or public employees from using their taxpayer-funded sinecure to gain special dispensation. The complaint relied on an extremely broad interpretation of the law in defiance of common sense. Would it also be illegal for state lawmakers to print campaign brochures that showed them in their Carson City offices? Mr. Lombardo was the sheriff. He wasn’t donning a uniform as an effort to con the voters. Nor was he accused of using Metropolitan Police Department resources to advance his candidacy.

Nevertheless, in an act that reeked of partisanship, the ethics commission’s executive director, Ross Armstrong, recommended that the panel fine Mr. Lombardo $1.67 million and throw in a censure for good measure. The board wisely resisted but still imposed a $20,000 fine and publicly reprimanded him.

Mr. Lombardo went to court in an effort to dismiss the penalties, but a District Court judge tossed the effort on a technicality. He then appealed to the state Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor earlier this year. Rather than continue the legal effort, however, Mr. Lombardo reached a deal with the commission to pay a $5,000 fine.

The board finalized the agreement last week.

“We are grateful that a majority of the Ethics Commission members voted to approve the stipulated agreement resolving the disciplinary matter instituted against Gov. Lombardo when he was Clark County sheriff,” the governor’s attorneys said in a statement. “We have maintained from the beginning that this was a case that should never have been brought and certainly never should have advanced.”

The state ethics panel can be an important tool for informing voters and holding government officials accountable when they go astray. But when the process is abused for partisan political gain — as it was in this case — public confidence in vital institutions is only further eroded.