It’s time to scrap our legislative process

By Jon Ralston (contact)

Friday, May 22, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.

When a couple of phantom ethics complaints can shut down the legislative process, force lawmakers to amend a rule governing abstentions and threaten to derail nearly four months of work, the situation is clear: Carson City, we have a problem.

That problem — part-time legislators with real-life jobs — is real, even if the ethics issues raised about state Sens. Warren Hardy and Bill Raggio this week were not so clear. But the solution is not so simple to prevent what often occurs in sessions, which is external forces using conflicts to subtract votes from issues. Indeed, after watching every session since 1987, I have come to the surely unpopular conclusion that only one fix will truly ameliorate the inherent problems with having a so-called citizen legislature: No more citizens!

That is, it’s time to make the Legislature full-time and professional, time to scrap a system that elects the ipso facto conflicted and allows lobbyists and special interests to raise the specter of ethical transgression to affect critical public policy issues. A citizen legislature is a relic of the past, an anachronism when the state was young, a quaint tradition in a place not so quaint anymore.

A legislature populated by well-compensated and well-staffed folks is immensely preferable to the quality of lawmakers and legislating produced by a system that pays them $130 for 60 days. The arguments against a full-time legislature notwithstanding — creating an elite class of insulated solons that is antithetical to the notion of a citizen legislature — do not override the imperative to clean up this cesspool of conflicts of interest, real and imagined, that now governs the state.

Let’s be clear: There was no other intent of the rumor-mongering that coursed through the Legislative Building about Hardy and Raggio than to take them out of critical votes on taxes. And the extraordinary steps that subsequently were taken by the Senate to supersede a legal opinion Raggio obtained, saying he had to abstain, were at once unseemly and necessary, designed to ensure that fairness prevailed in a biennially unfair process.

Hardy’s conflict is more direct — he is president of a lobbying group, Associated Builders and Contractors, which has many capital interests. But Hardy has fought against ethics accusations for some time and has a case pending before the state Supreme Court.

Raggio is a partner with Jones Vargas, which has a panoply of interests before the Gang of 63. No one from his firm is actively lobbying on taxes. But when someone raised the issue of one of his partners, Jim Wadhams, being asked one time in a committee to state a position, it almost took the minority leader out of voting on a tax package he helped create.

This is extraordinary silliness, matched only by the contortions that forced Majority Leader Steven Horsford, as much out of political expediency (the pro-tax folks thought they might need Raggio and Hardy’s votes) as principle, to change the rule so that any “globally” important measures (the new rule specifically named the tax bill) should not prevent any lawmaker from voting. Although situationally convenient, the principle is sound — part-timers have no conflict if everyone has a conflict because a global measure affects everyone.

But is this really the system we want in Nevada going forward?

Beyond the examples of conflicts cited by my colleagues J. Patrick Coolican and David McGrath Schwartz in Thursday’s Las Vegas Sun — “Day jobs of lawmakers bring chaos to session” — this happens every session. Consider a system where:

• It could be argued that Raggio’s law firm has special access to the most powerful senator of the past quarter-century.

• It could be argued that Hardy should not even serve as a lawmaker if he is essentially a lobbyist for a special interest.

• It could be argued — and is a serious constitutional question — that public employees in the Legislature are hopelessly conflicted.

• It could be argued — and was this week after these issues were raised — that board members of Nevada Partners, where Horsford is employed, and Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, where Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley works, could have special access to the leaders of the Legislature.

Simply because all of these things can be argued and could affect votes is reason enough to change the system. It raises the specter of corruption in a process that has more infirmities than I can detail here.

I know it is a facile argument, but after watching this week’s contortions and distortions, I have a simple question:

How could a full-time legislature, without any extra-session conflicts to impede lawmakers and poison the public’s mind, be any worse than what we have now?