Ethics bill no longer bars voting when ‘personal relationship’ involved

Thursday, April 8, 1999 | 10:41 a.m.

An amendment to SB478 bill removes personal relationships from a list of situations under which a vote abstention is required.

The list now includes household members, relatives, employers, employees, business partners and "any commitment or relationship that is substantially similar to any one of (those) relationships."

"What we think we did was create a balance," attorney Scott Scherer, Gov. Kenny Guinn's legal counsel, said Wednesday.

Scherer crafted the bill and proposed the amendment based on a committee hearing last week. "The Ethics Commission still has the ability to get into personal relationships, but only if they're so substantial that they're like family," he said.

Government Affairs Chairwoman Ann O'Connell, R-Las Vegas, praised Scherer and said she didn't think there could be "any doubt in anyone's mind what is meant."

Not present for the discussion was the outgoing Ethics Commission chairwoman, Mary Boetsch, who had told the committee earlier that removing the term "personal" would gut the bill and render the law ineffective.

The issue of how to define a personal relationship that required abstention was a driving force in the legislative review of the law. In several cases before the state Ethics Commission, elected officials in Clark County were chastised for failing to abstain on matters involving friends.

Another change that could become part of the Senate bill would bar people who filed ethics complaints from showing their complaints to the media until after an initial confidential hearing.

Majority Leader Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, and Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, asked attorneys to determine whether such a provision could be added to avoid publicity for people accused of misconduct until the Ethics Commission found merit to the complaint.

Legislative attorney Brenda Erdoes agreed to research the matter but warned that a Clark County District Court ruling struck down a previous Legislature's attempt to gag complainants.

Scherer said if the attorneys found the provision defensible, then it could be added to the bill without committee vote when it reached the Senate floor.

The main components of the bill moved along without debate, including parts that would expand the ethics panel by two members to eight; require the hiring of an executive director and a full-time attorney; shrink the time frame to handle cases to 60 days under most circumstances; raise the maximum fines imposed; and make potential felonies out of certain infractions.