IAP candidates again refuse to complete disclosure forms

Tuesday, June 22, 2004 | 9:24 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Independent American Party candidates for elected office are again refusing to completely fill out state-required financial disclosure statements this year.

The party's candidates also refused to file the information in 2002, and that has the issue before the Nevada Supreme Court today. The court is to hear an appeal on a district judge's ruling that candidates do not have to reveal this information and cannot be fined by the state for not filing the information.

Christopher H. Hansen, a candidate for the Assembly in Clark County and leader of the Independent American Party, filed his financial disclosure form within the deadline this year but said he had not completely filled it out. He said the state Commission on Ethics and the Secretary of State's Office have refused to answer questions about confusing and unclear wards and phrases used on this forms.

The information, Hansen said can be used by opponents to intimidate employers of candidates and their campaign donors, especially when it involves minor political parties such as his.

The disclosure statements ask for such things as the source of a candidate's income, a list of real estate where the value is more than $2,500, except for a person's residences; names of creditors where more than $5,000 is owed except in case of homes and vehicles and disclosure of gifts of $200 or more in the preceding year.

Most Independent American candidates filed their disclosure statements by the deadline in 2002 but more than 20 of them excluded some of the required information. The state Ethics Commission filed suit asking for a clarification of the law whether it had the right to determine the adequacy of these financial disclosure statements, which didn't include any information. And the commission wanted to know if it could levy a fine on those who failed to comply with the law.

District Judge Bill Maddox of Carson City ruled in favor of the Independent American candidates and the ethics commission appealed.

The 2003 Legislature mandated that financial disclosure statements be filed with the office of Secretary of State Dean Heller instead of the ethics commission. And Heller has filed a "friend of the court" brief in the Supreme Court appeal saying the information "is expressly required by law." He said the refusal to provide the data is a "clear violation" of the law.

Heller also said he feared that if the Supreme Court upholds the Maddox ruling it could be extended to undermine the requirement that political candidates must identify their campaign contributors and any amount in excess of $500.

In the pre-hearing brief he filed with the Supreme Court, Jonathan Hansen, the Independent American party's lawyer said there is no authority for either the ethics commission or the secretary of state to "look behind" the information supplied or not supplied.

Hansen says neither agency has authority to determine the truthfulness of the information.

He also argued that, "Disclosure of certain information is a violation of their constitutional rights" would have a chilling affect on candidates' protected rights of assembly, speech and religion.

"Neither the old or the new law confers any audit authority on the Nevada Commission on Ethics or the Secretary of State," Hansen said.

The full court will hear the arguments, take the case under study and will rule later.