City’s Hatch Act probe criticized

Dan Kulin

Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004 | 9:30 a.m.

A semi-retired Las Vegan said he thinks Henderson violated election laws by looking into whether the federal Hatch Act precluded Richard Perkins from being both speaker of the state Assembly and a city deputy police chief.

Speaking during the public comments portion of a Tuesday City Council meeting, Lee Haynes said the city's time and money spent researching the matter should be considered a campaign contribution to Perkins. Haynes also said Perkins broke campaign contribution reporting laws because he did not list this help from the city among his contributions.

Haynes, 62, said he plans to ask the secretary of state to investigate both the city and Perkins.

City officials disagreed with Haynes, saying, as they have before, that the city's look into whether Perkins' dual roles violated the Hatch Act was in the city's interest. At risk for the city was a longtime city employee and federal grant funds, they say.

The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees and some local government workers who oversee or are paid with federal grants from participating in partisan politics.

City Attorney Shauna Hughes said the city's development of policies to keep Perkins, a Democrat, away from federal funds was done to protect the city's investment in a longtime employee.

Mayor Jim Gibson, also a Democrat, said the federal Office of Special Counsel has already cleared the city of any wrongdoing in the past.

But the office warned that there would be a violation if Perkins runs for re-election while still a city employee in the future. Gibson and other City Council members have said Perkins cannot do both in the future unless the Office of Special Counsel reverses its position.

Perkins has asked the federal office, which oversee Hatch Act matters, to review his situation again.

Perkins and Gibson have said they will probably both run for governor in 2006.

In City Council action Tuesday, the installation of an additional 24 perchlorate monitoring wells was approved around the site of the former PEPCON plant, where the toxic rocket fuel component was manufactured until a deadly explosion at the plant in 1988.

American Pacific Corp., once known asPEPCON, still has administrative offices in Henderson and already has about 80 wells monitoring perchlorate in the groundwater.