Columnist Erin Neff: Nevada campaign finance reporting system is arcane

Erin Neff

Friday, Nov. 1, 2002 | 5:08 a.m.

MONEY IS the lifeblood of politics.

It pays for campaigns, pays for the ads and mailers that persuade voters, becomes a sign of a candidate's viability and even helps candidates raise more money.

But it also makes the voters cynical because money talks, and the voting public assumes that the donors will get a return on their investment.

The one check and balance is the state's requirement that all campaign finances are reported.

But in Nevada, the system is deeply flawed as the laws are inadequate at best, easily manipulated or even ignored.

The campaign finance reports should speak volumes about who is funding campaigns and how those seeking office are spending money. But the way the system is now, voters are left with little more than silence.

For starters, the reports are due just seven days before the election. And campaigns can legally manipulate the deadlines by mailing the information, adding days until someone even processes it.

In many cases, were it not for newspapers hounding campaigns, none of the information would get out. If a Las Vegas voter really wanted to know before Election Day how much Democrat Erin Kenny has raised and spent in the lieutenant governor's race, for example, he'd literally have to drive to Carson City and hope the mail beat him.

The public will probably never stop being cynical about the way money rules politics, but true disclosure of the dirty details might help raise confidence in the system.

Instead Nevada keeps to its time-honored tradition of making it nearly impossible to get a clear picture of anything.

The forms themselves are confusing, to the point that some officials seeking re-election still don't know how to fill them out properly. And when both the secretary of state and Clark County have more than one office for election filing, you sometimes have a candidate's form in one place and his opponent's in another area code.

Voters should have ready access to information in the weeks, not the week, before Election Day and it should be in a form anyone can get on their home PC or at a library or community center.

It's understandable that a White Pine County recorder candidate, for example, might have trouble finding scanning equipment in Ely. But there's no excuse for the way reports for statewide offices like attorney general and lieutenant governor are handled.

The attorney general's race in Nevada is among the closest on the ballot with polls showing it dead even in Clark County. But if a voter wanted more information on Democrat John Hunt's campaign contributions, which have become an issue in this race, getting the data from an election official last week was impossible.

On Oct. 29, the deadline for the second campaign report, Hunt's campaign dutifully filed the paperwork in the Las Vegas office of the secretary of state.

The problem is, that office didn't copy it, didn't scan it into a website and didn't keep it for more than an hour. Nope, it went right into an envelope where it spent the next few days en route to the Carson City office which does -- eventually -- scan the info onto the Web.

If you wait for all that to happen, the election will be over.

Candidates shouldn't have a choice. Voters don't. If you wanted to vote absentee, you had to make sure your application for a ballot was in an election official's hands -- not hand-stamped -- by last Tuesday at 5 p.m.

Why not subject those whose information is supposed to be scrutinized to the same deadline?

The hard-working staff at the Clark County Elections Department spent all day Tuesday -- literally all day -- huddled over copy machines churning out reams of paper to fill boxes for reporters who stopped by at 5.

Not only is it a waste of paper, it's a waste of time, toner and the officials' sanity.

But trying to make any changes to the antiquated campaign reporting system in Nevada is almost as hard as passing a tax increase.

Officials don't really want more disclosure. They want as little information about themselves out there as possible. That way the crickets happily chirping on campaign commercials take the place of what should be a firefly shining light on the most corruptible portion of politics -- the money.

The three campaign reports for state officials are due Aug. 27, Oct. 29 and Jan. 15, 2003. By the time most people can see the first report, the primary election is long gone. And what point will the information in the second report have when it is finally available after Nov. 5?

And what happens to people who don't even file?

Hunt's biggest supporter, Vestin Mortgage CEO Mike Shustek, has been running an independent campaign for Hunt but had yet to file a disclosure form as required by law. Late filing is subject to a $25 a day fine by the state Ethics Commission, but with his deep pockets, he isn't exactly worried about it.

The law needs teeth, and officials willing to enforce it.

Reports should be required two weeks before each election. And they should be immediately filed online, not scanned in weeks after the polls close.

What good is it that 92 officials take part in the secretary of state's online reporting program if they also have to file a paper copy of everything?

In 2002 there's no legitimate reason that a voter can't go online to find a list of each campaign contributor and all of the candidate's expenses -- in all of the races.

But if you do look through the reports, there are plenty of reasons why no politician wants to shine more light that way.