Gates files suit against ethics panel

Adrienne Packer and Bill Gang

Tuesday, Feb. 2, 1999 | 11:27 a.m.

The state Ethics Commission has released two opinions in the past five months on complaints filed against Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates.

And Atkinson Gates has launched two counter-attacks.

Her attorney Daniel Polsenberg filed a petition in District Court late Monday seeking to overturn an Ethics Commission's opinion that Atkinson Gates used her position as a county board member to further her daiquiri business interest at Strip hotels. The commission ruling was made July 5, and a written version released earlier this month.

Atkinson Gates had said she had no active participation in the business.

The petition for judicial review called the Ethics Commission's findings "illegal, arbitrary, capricious and not supported by substantial evidence."

Like a similar petition filed in district court in October, the lawsuit asks that the state ethics statutes be declared unconstitutional, because they violate due process and separation of powers provisions in the Constitution.

The October petition was filed after the Ethics Commission's August ruling that says Gates and fellow board member Lance Malone violated laws by voting for friends applying for concession space at McCarran International Airport.

In both cases, Polsenberg argued that the laws are vague. If a statute prohibits a behavior, but doesn't clearly say what the behavior is, it should be deemed unconstitutional, he said.

In the court records filed Monday, Polsenberg notes "on prior occasions the commission has opined that the statutes in Chapter 281 were designed to be vague and to grant it unlimited discretion to determine, after the fact, what conduct violates the statute.

"Such actions by the Legislature and/or interpretations by the commission, however, are violative of both state and federal constitutions," the lawsuit says.

Polsenberg said the petition was filed to accompany the most recent Ethics Commission ruling in court.

"We may even combine the two, because we raised the issues -- the statute is unconstitutional and unclear," he said Monday evening.