Where’s mine?

The Democrat-controlled Assembly can always be counted upon to look out for the interests of its primary constituency: public employees.

Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, is miffed that freshman Assemblyman Steven Brooks, D-Las Vegas, had to take an unpaid leave of absence from his job with the city of Las Vegas last year to campaign for the office. Mr. Segerblom, through Assembly Bill 433, wants a law that prevents private-sector employers from taking action against workers who run for office to apply to government workers, as well.

Mr. Brooks had to take unpaid leave from the city of Las Vegas for two good reasons: Wendell Williams and Morse Arberry. Nearly a decade ago, a Review-Journal investigation found the longtime Assembly members and city employees ran roughshod over their city supervisors and taxpayers, collecting sick leave when they weren't sick and regular salaries when they didn't do any work. As elected legislators in a state with no home rule, they effectively became their bosses' bosses, and they conducted themselves as such.

Regardless of whether public employees are merely campaigning or already elected, they immediately gain the ability to intimidate and potentially retaliate against both members of the public and fellow government workers. What supervisor would question a public employee's productivity and time card if that employee could soon have the power to punish the entire department?

All this flies in the face of the Nevada Constitution's separation of powers doctrine, which clearly prohibits anyone from serving in two branches of government at the same time. An old, partisan attorney general's opinion has given public employees a pass to serve in the Legislature, where they have feathered their own nests, at taxpayer expense, session after session.

Nevada's public employees already are the highest-compensated sector of the state's battered work force. AB433 is another bill in the fine tradition of what legendary Chicago columnist Mike Royko labeled that city's slogan: Ubi Est Mea. Translation: Where's mine?