Columnist Jon Ralston: On revising mining law, and complex campaign contributions

Friday, Dec. 2, 2005 | 7:25 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face with Jon Ralston on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the daily e-mail newsletter RalstonFlash.com. His column for the Las Vegas Sun appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com.

A federal potpourri, featuring a congressman's pain over helping the mining industry and money taken out of campaign coffers by two other Nevada members of the Gang of 535 ...

Whose mine is it anyway?

Rep. Jim Gibbons has received a chorus of criticism over his partnership with House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo for a provision that would allow millions of acres of public lands to be sold to private developers.

The change to the creaky Mining Law of 1872 would allow developers to buy mining patents on public lands for $1,000 an acre or fair market value, whichever is greater.

Many environmentalists and newspapers have weighed in against the idea, tucked into a spending bill. The latest was the San Bernardino Sun, which called the idea a "corporate giveaway of public land and federal revenue."

Gibbons, of course, strongly disagrees and said so during a recent "Face to Face" interview. He said opponents are "just absolutely, totally misinformed" about what the bill does and insisted that mining companies cannot turn the land over to developers.

"Who is going to build a housing complex on a mine?" Gibbons said. "No one wants to live on a mine."

But this bill does not just address land where mines have been abandoned.

Rather, developers could buy mining claims even if they never existed or had been removed.

Beyond the policy roundly being panned, the question is whether this is a political liability for Gibbons as he seeks Gov. Kenny Guinn's job.

On the one hand, mining is beloved in rural Nevada and in parts of the North, so it may actually help Gibbons. But if it becomes a cause celebre for the enviros, who are strong in the urban areas, might that make a difference?

My guess: Unless it is used to paint, as part of an aggregation of issues, a negative portrait of the gubernatorial frontrunner as a button for corporate interests, it won't have much effect -- unless it becomes a bigger and bigger national story.

We may never know, though, because, as incensed liberal blogger Hugh Jackson has pointed out, Democratic frontrunner Dina Titus has been mum on the public lands provision. Must be because it's a federal issue, not because she is fearful of alienating those cowboys she's courting.

I inquired Thursday as to when Titus might break her silence and a spokesman told me although she has yet to comment, "Like most of what Congressman Gibbons proposes, she thinks it's bad policy."

There you have it.

We don't want your stinkin' money, Take One: Rep. Jon Porter once danced with the Duke, but no longer. Porter has taken $11,000 since 2000 from ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham's leadership PAC and from the disgraced congressman. But he has decided to shed all of the money, even though technically some of it already was spent on past campaigns.

Porter has decided not to return the money to Cunningham, who resigned this week after pleading guilty to a government contracts-for-bribes scheme.

Instead, he has elected to give the money to an as-yet undetermined charity.

We don't want your stinkin' money, Take Two: Unlike Porter, his GOP colleague, Sen. John Ensign, recently wasn't given a choice about a $500 donation he received in 1998, when he ran unsuccessfully for the Club of 100 against Harry Reid.

The money came from an employee of a company, AMEC Construction Management (AMEC), which later was found to have reimbursed its employees for campaign contributions -- a practice that surely happens much more frequently than the Federal Election Commission can police it.

In a letter from the FEC to the Ensign campaign, agency attorney Mark A. Goodin gently reminded the senator's organization of its responsibility "for examining all contributions received by the political committee for evidence of illegality." But those who received contributions were not part of the FEC probe into AMEC, and as part of an agreement with the FEC, AMEC agreed to waive any rights to the refunds.

So last month Ensign's campaign wrote a check to the U.S. Treasury for $500.