Budget cuts hamper ethics panel

Sunday, Dec. 9, 2007 | 2:22 a.m.

Carson City

What price ethics?

In Nevada, it's apparently $2,000.

Although complaints about Gov. Jim Gibbons' potential 8 percent budget reductions are coming mainly from big programs such as the university system, smaller agencies also are being hit.

The tiny five-employee state Ethics Commission, for example, won't have enough money to adopt new regulations at its Dec. 12 meeting.

Patty Cafferata, the commission's executive director, said $2,000 had been budgeted to have proposed regulations reviewed by the Legislative Counsel Bureau to make sure they comply with the law and the 2007 Legislature's intent when it changed some sections of the ethics law.

Now, however, there's no money to pay for the counsel bureau's review - the funds are part of the agency's proposed budget cuts, Cafferata said.

That means ethics commission officials won't be able to cite violations of the old regulations, which are now outdated. And the lack of a counsel bureau review will alter how the new law is enforced, forcing officials who otherwise would simply check the new ethics regulations to instead consult a "conversion chart" that specifies how the old law has been changed.

"It's one more step but it's not burdensome," said Cafferata, a former state assemblywoman and state treasurer.

The Legislature's changes to the ethics law included one measure to expand the opportunity for state or local government workers to accept employment with private companies. The new law also canceled a provision that made a public officer who accepted an honorarium guilty of a gross misdemeanor, reducing it from a criminal charge to a civil penalty.

The commission submitted its proposed budget cuts last week to state Budget Director Andrew Clinger. Gibbons is expected to make his budget reduction decisions next month.