Columnist Jeff German: To elect or appoint? The debate heats up

Friday, Feb. 7, 2003 | 5:04 a.m.

FIGURING out whether it's better to elect or appoint certain local government officials is a never-ending debate.

So you might be surprised to hear that the Legislature two years ago -- without any debate -- approved a constitutional amendment that would give it authority to make county offices, such as sheriff and district attorney, appointed positions.

The amendment, passed almost unanimously in the 11th hour of the June 2001 special session, was buried deep in a joint resolution seeking to create a commission to set the salaries of state offices and allow county commissions to determine the pay scale for county offices.

Two years later we're just learning about the amendment.

Several lawmakers who voted for Assembly Joint Resolution 1 said last week they had no idea it could lead to a profound change in the way we select our public officeholders. Some said they didn't even know the amendment was in the resolution when they voted for it.

There doesn't seem to be any big conspiracy as to how lawmakers arrived at this conclusion.

Records show Assemblywoman Kathy McClain, D-Las Vegas, first proposed the idea of appointing county officials when the resolution was discussed before the Assembly's Committee on Constitutional Amendments during the regular session of the Legislature in May 2001.

McCain, it turns out, is just someone who believes the Legislature would be better off if it could make these offices appointed.

The assemblywoman didn't return phone calls from Carson City, so we don't know her exact thinking. But the minutes of the meeting show she argued that if the resolution provided for the county positions to be appointed, the Legislature wouldn't have to deal with the touchy salary issue in the future. That would fall under the purview of the counties.

McCain's suggestion snowballed from that committee meeting. It attached itself to the resolution and made its way through the Legislature virtually unchallenged.

And now it has put us in the position today of having to think long and hard about the merits of electing or appointing county officials.

By law the resolution must be passed again this year and then placed on the ballot in 2004 before the amendment can take effect. If it makes it through that process, all it would take is the simple passing of a bill to give the Legislature the power to make the sheriff and district attorney appointed offices.

But there are a lot of questions we should be asking before we get to that point.

The most fundamental question is whether appointing a sheriff or district attorney is more democratic than electing those positions. We need to be clear about the upside and downside of both methods.

Most district attorneys are elected. But in many cities, police chiefs are appointed by a mayor or a police commission.

Las Vegas, however, isn't like many cities. Though the police department is consolidated, we don't have a metropolitan government. Competing city and county governments both fund the police department.

So if we choose the appointment route, who would do the appointing? The county or the city?

And why should the Legislature give itself the option of making just county offices appointed? AJR 1 says nothing about appointing such offices as city attorney and city clerk? Why are they different than their counterparts in the county?

These are just a few questions we should be asking.

They are questions that should have been asked by lawmakers two years ago before they hastily passed AJR 1 and opened this Pandora's box.

Hopefully, during this session, as lawmakers get another shot at the resolution, we'll see the debate we should have seen in 2001.