Jones faces another state ethics complaint

Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1998 | 8:15 a.m.

Yet she has never been judged to have violated state ethics laws - each complaint has been dismissed.

Jones believes many of the complaints have been politically motivated.

A little more than two weeks before Jones' name again will be on the Democratic primary ballot as a gubernatorial candidate, the ethics commissioners will be quizzing her a seventh time, meeting Aug. 14 to consider a complaint filed by former City Councilman Steve Miller, who lost to Jones in the 1991 mayoral race.

The commissioners will probe the complex financial relationships between Jones, her husband Richard Schuetz, and casino executive William Boyd and others. The panel also will question whether she should have disclosed those ties before she voted against a proposed restaurant Boyd opposed.

Jones cast her vote a few days after asking Boyd for a campaign contribution and after her husband had received financing from Boyd for a land purchase.

The mayor had initiated her first bid for governor by insisting ethics would be a cornerstone of her campaign.

"I would never vote on an item where a person who gave me money had a material interest," she pledged Nov. 4, 1993.

Jones pledged as mayor she would hold herself to a higher standard than the law required and would not vote on items that materially affected her campaign contributors without either disclosing or abstaining.

But six weeks before the 1994 primary, research showed Jones had violated her own vow to abstain on matters affecting her campaign donors, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Monday. She had voted on three businesses that contributed $26,000 to her gubernatorial race.

One vote extended a $200,000 contract to Environmental Technologies of Nevada, which had donated $6,000 to her race through a related company.

She voted for a major rezoning by Howard Hughes Properties two days after the company had donated $5,000 to her. She said she had asked for the donation months before.

And she voted on a gaming license for a company partly owned by Ernie Becker Jr., whose gaming company had donated $15,000 to her five months earlier.

Ethics issues dogged her throughout her campaign. However, each time an official complaint was filed, it ended up being judged without merit.

Now that she has had extensive personal experience with ethics complaints, Jones has a concern about the way the process can be used for political purposes - but she also contends the law needs more teeth.

"There's no point in saying you shouldn't have done that but we don't have the authority to punish."

She proposes stronger financial penalties than the $5,000 fines possible, and making it easier to fine people.