Bill would clarify when public workers can help on campaigns

Kirsten Searer

Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2004 | 9:25 a.m.

Sen. Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, is pushing a bill to prohibit public employees from doing campaign work for their bosses while on the public dime.

"They're not there to help those politicians," he said. "They're there to serve constituents and the taxpayers."

The issue came up during the recent impeachment trial of state Controller Kathy Augustine, who admitted to asking a few of her employees to help her with campaign work during their work day.

While she was impeached by the Assembly, state senators declined to remove her from office after the Legislative Counsel Bureau issued an opinion that unclassified employees could do limited campaign work.

Unclassified employees serve at the will of their bosses and have no civil service protection for firing or discipline.

"In my opinion, it is a slap in the face of the taxpayers of Nevada to think our employees are supposed to be used for this purpose," Horsford said.

Horsford said he has received "numerous" e-mails from local and state employees who said they have been asked to do campaign work by their publicly elected superiors.

"One group getting signed petitions from employees at one local municipality feels they were pressured into participating into something they didn't want to participate in," Horsford said. "They felt like if they didn't, their jobs would be at risk."

Horsford declined to say which employees were gathering the petitions.

Scott McKenzie, executive director of the State of Nevada Employees Association, the union that represents about 4,000 state employees, said he hasn't received complaints about employees being forced to do campaign work. But he said he supports the idea of the bill as long as public employees could help on campaigns when they aren't working.

"People shouldn't be working on campaigns during paid time," he said. "And people shouldn't feel that because somebody is their boss they have to work on their campaign."