LETTER: Nevada’s Legislative landlords and conflicts of interest

It’s tiresome reading unbalanced articles in the Review-Journal. A case in point is Sunday’s “Landlords vote against tenants bills.”

I am neither a renter nor a landlord and have no ax to grind here. But the article shows obvious bias in favor of these bills, which would be fine on the op-ed pages. But it’s inappropriate here. In particular, the major theme of the article is that people who own rental properties should not vote on a bill affecting their interest in those properties.

Not once does the article consider the flip side of this. Specifically, using the same logic — that legislators who rent property should not be allowed to vote on these bills — legislators older than 62 who rely on Social Security should not be allowed to vote on AB298 because it capped rent hikes for seniors on Social Security. The story cites legislators who own rental properties, but ignores legislators who pay rent or mortgages or are on Social Security.

In addition, the only real argument for the ethics proposition is the opinion of a political science professor at Truckee Meadows Community College. There are no citations to any political science professor with the opposing view, i.e., that legislators are allowed to vote on these bills as long as they wouldn’t be impacted any differently than anyone else in the same profession.