Lawmaker works for TV station

Kirsten Searer

Friday, March 4, 2005 | 11:11 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, has a contract to consult with the news director at KVBC Channel 3 on news content, including on issues going on in the Legislature.

Cegavske disclosed this week during a joint budget committee hearing that she was working for Sunbelt Communications, which owns KVBC.

She added that she intended to continue voting on issues related to higher education, even though the owner of Sunbelt Communications, Jim Rogers, also is the interim chancellor of the university system.

Cegavske said she has worked with the station for about a year and typically helps with stories about education, health care and, sometimes, the Legislature.

"I'm a consultant," she said. "They'll call me about different issues, ask me questions about health or education issues."

Cegavske has consulted for several Las Vegas companies, including WestCare Nevada, which receives some state funding to provide substance abuse treatment. She said she draws from her 30 years in Las Vegas and her background in education, which she said she started learning about when her children were in school.

"It's not just things that I see," she said. "I'll try to do some research. I've gotten them information from national education forums so they get a well-rounded amount of information. I think we play it very well. They've continued to interview me on issues and bring up whatever I have, not because of me, because of whatever the issue was."

Rogers said Thursday that he sees no conflict with hiring Cegavske, who he said is retained for about $3,000 a month to help the KVBC newsroom "so we know if something big is happening."

The relationship started in late 2003, when Rogers, whose wife is friends with Cegavske, approached Cegavske with an idea to consult for the station.

"I said to her, 'I think our news department might be able to use you as a consultant on issues coming up in the Legislature,' " he said.

KVBC's news director, Jaime Ioos, met with Cegavske and reported to Rogers that Cegavske's input could prove useful, Rogers said.

Since then, Rogers said, he has stayed out of the arrangement.

"I usually start something out," he said. "I'm not a micromanager, so I wouldn't watch it unless I know something's going wrong."

Conflicts of interest often come up in Nevada's part-time citizen legislature, where legislators typically have outside employment, unless they are retired.

But Al Tompkins, a television consultant with clients around the country and a member of the faculty of the Poynter Institute, an independent think tank for journalists, said he hasn't heard of a legislator contracting with a news outlet while they are in office.

"Generally it is the role of the media to cover legislators, not employ them," he said. "Obviously when you're covering somebody and you're employing them, that would be an issue."

Media outlets sometimes employ former lawmakers or other officials such as retired military leaders to gain their expertise, Thompkins said. But this situation is different because Cegavske is a lawmaker now, he said.

"Can you imagine a newspaper employing a member of Congress?" he asked. "I've never heard of such a thing."

Mark Neerman, news director at KVVU Fox 5, said the station doesn't contract with legislators to give background on stories.

"I have at other stations worked with poli sci professors and university folks," he said. "I kind of prefer if I'm going to go with any kind of agreement with someone that it be someone, I guess, more third-party. College campuses usually serve that."

Ioos referred questions to KVBC station manager Gene Greenberg, who said he did not see a conflict with employing Cegavske.

The station mostly has asked Cegavske about issues relating to education, Greenberg said. But Cegavske did meet with the station's producers before the legislative session began to explain the process and talk about issues that might come up, he said.

"We wanted to do the best possible job covering the Legislature," he said.

Greenberg said the station would disclose the relationship if managers felt it compromised their coverage.

"If something came up that she was involved with, we would disclose everything," he said.

Several leaders in the Legislature said they didn't have a problem with Cegavske's role, even though she has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Nevada State College in Henderson, a new college that Rogers strongly supports but that Cegavske has said pulls money from community colleges.

"I hope it doesn't affect it," said Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, another strong opponent of the college. "Barbara has been consistently critical of the college."

Giunchigliani, though, who faced her own conflicts of interest when she worked for the Community College of Southern Nevada, said it's inevitable that citizen legislators will see overlaps in their full-time job at home and their part-time job in Carson City.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said Cegavske is following the right protocol by talking about the relationship.

"Practically everyone here at some point has to make a disclosure," Raggio said.

Cegavske pointed out that she disclosed the relationship several times during interim finance committee hearings before the legislative session. She also ran the idea past her own attorney and attorneys at the Legislative Counsel Bureau, she said.

Cegavske reported the contract on her financial disclosure form filed with the Secretary of State's office.

She said she continues to have questions about Nevada State College, and that Rogers hasn't approached her about the issue.

"He hasn't even lobbied me, to be honest with you," Cegavske said. "There's no pressure whatsoever from him or me to do anything."

Commenting only on the political ethics of Cegavske's employment by KVBC, Craig Walton, emeritus professor of ethics and policy studies at UNLV, said it's important that the relationship be out in the open and that Cegavske continue to disclose it. She might also be careful about expressing her reasons for making votes about higher education issues, he said.

"It doesn't seem like the conflict of interest is close enough where it's the kind of thing where she should abstain automatically," he said.