Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

State Senate forms committee to hear ethics complaints

Steven Horsford

Steven Horsford

Allison Copening

Allison Copening

Despite being midway through the legislative session, the state Senate had not formed an Ethics Committee to accept and review complaints against its members.

That changed Tuesday afternoon, after the Las Vegas Sun asked about the committee.

Senate leadership moved quickly to name members and a chairman, Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas.

Still, 57 days of the 120-day session passed with the public having no official channel through which to file a complaint against a state senator.

Senate rules require all complaints to be filed with the committee chairman, a position that did not exist until Tuesday afternoon.

The Nevada Assembly formed its Ethics Committee earlier this session.

Nevada has a part-time, citizen Legislature, making conflicts between lawmakers’ day jobs and their official posts both inherent and rampant. Lawmakers receive $26,800 — a combination of salary and per diem — for each session, held every other year.

Lawmakers have been subject to complaints filed with the Nevada Ethics Commission. But in 2009, the Legislature fought an exemption from commission oversight. Lawyers for the legislative branch successfully argued before the state Supreme Court that an executive branch agency should not have power over lawmakers when they performed “core legislative functions,” such as voting.

Lawmakers said at the time that the public had no reason to worry — lawmakers would police themselves. “It’s more important to preserve the public trust than to protect relationships,” Horsford told the Sun in April 2009.

Neither the Assembly nor Senate ethics committees met that session. Nor had they met this session, until Tuesday.

Horsford would not explain the delay. “We will entertain any issue that comes before us,” he said.

The issue arose after Sen. Allison Copening, D-Las Vegas, who works for homeowners associations, introduced seven bills dealing with the topic.

Jonathan Friedrich, a Las Vegas resident and critic of homeowners associations, said he filed a complaint against Copening with the Nevada Ethics Commission. Copening has maintained her job does not present a conflict.

Caren Jenkins, executive director of the Ethics Commission, said she could not disclose whether a complaint was filed before an initial review. But because of the Supreme Court decision, Jenkins said, such matters would fall under the jurisdiction of the Senate Ethics Committee, “if there is such an animal.”

Copening formed a working group after the 2009 session to develop the legislation, and took a job as lifestyle director for an HOA management company in September.

A letter from legislative counsel to Copening said that Senate rules allowed her to introduce legislation “regardless of whether you have a conflict of interest with respect to the measure because of your employment.”

“You must determine whether the independence of judgment of a reasonable person in your position would be materially affected by your employment with a common-interest community,” the letter said.

But it also said “if the benefit or detriment of the particular measure is not greater on the common-interest community with which you are employed than on any other common-interest community, it is the opinion of this office that you would not have a conflict of interest on the measure.” However, “you should be careful to watch for legislation that directly and distinctly affects your employer.”

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