Letter: Conflicts of interest clarified

Thursday, July 17, 2003 | 9:18 a.m.

At a July 2 zoning meeting County Commissioner Chip Maxfield disclosed his interest in Jay Bingham's proposal to put condominiums in a Rural Preservation Neighborhood, and then cast the deciding vote to override that zoning to allow the condos.

In the July 3 Las Vegas Sun, County Counsel Mary-Anne Miller is quoted as saying that my evaluation of this action was speculative and unfair.

In my understanding of the "ethics in government" law (NRS 281, section 501), Maxfield's private commitment to the interests of his son, his son's fiancee and her family is, to a reasonable person, sufficiently intimate to jeopardize the independence of his judgment. Therefore he should have abstained. Here, with some paraphrasing and excerpting, is what the law does:

I would be very grateful, and I think all of us would be helped, if these words could be understood widely and deeply, as I think they were intended to cover these kinds of cases. Or, the words should be changed and rewritten if they, or my reading of them, really is "speculative" instead of straightforward and true to the letter and the spirit of this law.

CRAIG WALTON

Editor's note: Craig Walton is a professor of ethics and policy studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.