Public Employees as Legislators
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MAY 10, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
The biggest conflict of all
Twenty-eight of the 63 legislators who served in the 1999 Nevada Legislature were either public employees or married to public employees, according to reporting by Ed Vogel of the Review-Journal's Capital Bureau.
Twenty-eight.
Leave out the 10 spouses, and 18 were on some executive branch payroll directly.
Of Southern Nevada lawmakers, four work for the Clark County School District, which sucks state funds like a tumor with a dedicated blood vessel. Two sitting lawmakers work for UNLV; three hold Clark County government jobs; two work for the city of Las Vegas.
In four cases -- those of Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas; Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks; Ellen Koivisto, D-Las Vegas; and Richard Perkins, D-Henderson -- both the legislator and his or her spouse hold executive branch government jobs.
"It's so blatant," says Judy Cresanta, president of the Nevada Policy Research Institute. "A Legislature controlled by public employees isn't going to vote themselves out of a position of power."
The easy temptation, as the tentacles of modern government extend themselves into nearly every aspect of our lives, is to ask: So what? After all, part-time lawmakers and their spouses have to work somewhere.
"Our being a citizen Legislature means we have to look at things differently," argues Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, who consulted legislative attorneys during the 1999 session before voting on matters that could directly affect her husband, a state parole officer.
Besides, state ethics laws require lawmakers to publicly disclose any potential conflict before voting on a matter that affects them or their employers financially. And "I think most legislators are pretty careful," state Sen. Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, assures us.
But careful to do what? A 1993 "Ethics Commission" decision held that schoolteachers who now sit in the Legislature are free to vote on across-the-board salary increases for all government-school teachers, providing they don't award themselves higher raises than their cohorts.
It wasn't always thus. The Nevada state Constitution clearly states: "The powers of the Government of the State of Nevada shall be divided into three separate departments -- the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial; and no person charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any functions, appertaining to either of the others, except in the cases expressly directed or permitted in this constitution."
As late as May 9, 1955, a state attorney general's opinion from Harvey Dickerson held that a part-time public school janitor, having been elected to the state Assembly, could not assume that legislative seat until he retired the executive branch position -- be it ever so humble -- foreswearing any income whatsoever from the school district.
But on Jan. 26, 1971 -- mere weeks after Robert List took over the office from the veteran Mr. Dickerson -- a new attorney general's opinion discovered the previously unrecognized doctrine that (lo and behold) "Since the separation of powers doctrine is not applicable to local government, school teachers may serve in the legislature."
But that's absurd. Such logic would hold only if schoolteachers did not impose curricula approved by the state government, and the state Legislature never voted substantial funding for local schools and their teachers' salaries, which is not the case today by a long shot -- else why the need for all this careful parsing of the entrails by our so-called "Ethics Commission"?
This isn't really so complicated. The reason we have a "citizen Legislature," Sen. Carlton, is so that when tax hikes are proposed, the legislator will automatically think to him or herself: "Gosh, that's going to cost me money out of my paycheck, or every time I go to the store. Is the new proposal really worth it?"
But just ask any long-time government employee whether a tax hike "costs money" or "nets money." He or she will respond without hesitation that tax hikes "raise revenue -- they give us more money to work with."
Symmetrically, the kind of people who see more pay in their take-home when government allocations increase -- rather than less -- will routinely refer to tax cuts not as something that "leaves more money in our pockets," but rather as something that "costs us money," whereupon they routinely demand with a snarl, "And how are you going to pay for that?"
The totality of the permanent and unavoidable conflict of interest corrupting any government employee, sitting in the Legislature and pretending to represent the average tax-payer, is inescapable.
Sen. Raggio blusters that it's absurd to talk about removing the government employees from the Legislature -- why, no state but Nebraska any longer blocks public employees from serving as lawmakers.
"Would you want to say a lawyer in the Legislature shouldn't be able to practice law because he set a judge's salary?" storms the majority leader, grasping for the most outrageous reductio ad absurdum he can imagine.
Let's start by joining Nebraska and making it two states with the common sense, the decency, and the rediscovered respect for the highest law of the land to do what our state Constitution requires -- barring all public employees, including government schoolteachers, from the Legislature.
Then, since practicing attorneys are indeed considered "officers of the court" and thus members of the judicial branch, we can take up Mr. Raggio's perfectly sensible proposal, and consider barring practicing attorneys from sitting in the state Legislature, as well -- whenever he's ready.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224 or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
