Thursday, April 20, 2000 | 9:24 a.m.
Members of Nevada's congressional delegation have been steadfast in their opposition to the building of a high-level nuclear waste repository in Nevada. So imagine the shock felt by Nevadans this week when it was discovered that some of these same officials showed a serious lapse in judgment -- accepting donations from a contractor that actually is doing work on a proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada. In fact, if it weren't for campaign disclosure requirements in federal law, the public might not have ever known about these donations.
The Ralston Report, a political newsletter published by Sun columnist Jon Ralston, first disclosed that former Rep. John Ensign, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Richard Bryan, last month had accepted a contribution of $2,000 from Science Applications International Corp., which is a primary contractor on the Yucca Mountain Project. It took Ensign's campaign at least two weeks before it decided to return the donation. Ensign's campaign claimed the reason for the delay was that its staff needed the time to go through its protocol to determine whether it should be returned.
After Ensign's announcement, both Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., quickly followed suit, acknowledging that they also had accepted donations -- but now would return them. Reid had accepted a total of $4,000 in donations from SAIC during 1997 and 1998. Reid spokesman Mark Schuermann told Ralston, in a column published Wednesday in the Sun, that neither the senator nor anyone on his staff knew when Reid accepted the donations that the corporation was a contractor for the repository. Gibbons, who returned $1,000, chimed in with a similar refrain: "Like Senator Reid, I was unaware of SAIC's relationship to the Yucca Mountain program."
It is hard to believe that these three longtime elected officials wouldn't know about SAIC's connection to the Yucca Mountain Project. These aren't neophytes who are cutting their teeth in politics. Nuclear waste storage is the most important issue confronting Nevada, and SAIC's connection to the proposed repository has been well known since the early 1990s. Even if you accept their contention that they weren't familiar with SAIC's role in the proposed repository, it is troubling that they -- and their staffs -- aren't paying closer attention to who is contributing to their campaigns. Such ardent opponents of nuclear waste should have known better than to accept these donations.
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