Ethics panel rules against commissioner

Wednesday, June 16, 1999 | 11:21 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The state Ethics Commission has ruled that a county commissioner must not only disclose but also must abstain from voting when a law firm his child belongs to appears before the county commission.

The confidential case involving a county commissioner, who was not identified, was heard Oct. 22 last year in Las Vegas.

The county commissioner, who is a lawyer, knew he had to disclose the ties between him and the law firm if it had an item before the unnamed county commission. But he suggested he did not have to abstain from voting.

In an opinion released Tuesday and signed by Chairwoman Mary Boetsch, the commission said, "The relationship of father to child will always be deemed to materially affect the independence of judgment of a reasonable person ...

"This commission finds compelling the rationale that a reasonable person could not help but desire the success of his child and that that desire would extend to the child's employer because one of the most meaningful sources of the child's success is the child's employer."

The child worked in the summer of 1998 as a clerk for a law firm and is to be hired as an associate after passage of the bar examination this year. This law firm represents clients before the county commission once or twice a year.

The father, who is the county commissioner, requested that the hearing and his name be kept confidential. The location of the county was also kept confidential.

In another opinion released Tuesday in which the names were also kept confidential, the commission ruled there is no violation of ethics when a husband sits as president of a state commission on which his wife serves as a nonvoting member.

This case was also heard in Las Vegas Oct. 22 in private and both the husband and wife sought advice from the commission. But they declined to reveal their names.

The husband works for a school district and was appointed by the governor to serve on an unidentified state commission. The wife is an administrator in the state Department of Education and by law is responsible for enforcing the regulations created by the state commission and is the nonvoting secretary.

The state commission has no authority over the employment of the wife nor her supervisor. And the supervisor in the department of education has no jurisdiction over the husband's employment in the school district.