Editorial: Talk about a bad cut

Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

One of the budget cuts being considered by the Gibbons administration includes $2,000 that the state Ethics Commission had planned to use to have new ethics rules vetted by legal experts to make sure they comply with changes that the Legislature made to state ethics laws this year.

As the Las Vegas Sun reported Sunday, the Ethics Commission won't be able to adopt the new regulations at its meeting Wednesday unless they have been reviewed by the Legislative Counsel Bureau - a service for which the Ethics Commission, a small agency with not much funding, budgeted $2,000.

Patty Cafferata, the commission's executive director, told Sun reporter Cy Ryan the panel cannot simply enforce old ethics regulations because the Legislature changed them in this year's session. But it also cannot enforce new rules without a legal review to make sure they comply with the intent of the Legislature's changes.

For now, the commissioners will have to refer to a chart that explains in what ways the law has changed, the Sun reports.

This added step could serve to complicate and slow the process of enforcing ethics rules, and it could force commissioners to interpret the Legislature's intent regarding rules that haven't been implemented yet - a task that more appropriately rests with legal experts.

Gibbons has ordered all state departments to cut their budgets by 8 percent - a cut that could, among other things, pinch the state's higher education system and cut crucial government services such as those offered to Nevadans suffering from mental illness.

But to dilute the enforcement of ethics rules for want of $2,000 seems extremely shortsighted - even for Gibbons, who never has favored adequately funding government.

Nevada already operates on a fairly lean budget and is suffering from years of shortfalls that have resulted in never having enough money to pay for the services that residents rightly expect.

Significant ethics concerns have been raised regarding Nevada public officials in recent years, and this is hardly the time to cut funding that allows the state Ethics Commission to do its job.