Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Collins says his ethics amendment not a slap at Giunchigliani

giunchigliani collins

Sam Morris

Clark County Commissioners Tom Collins and Chris Giunchigliani take part in a meeting in 2007.

Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani claimed it wasn’t personal when she proposed a lobbying ban for commissionersthat would affect only one member of the board — Tom Collins.

And Collins said it wasn’t personal, either, when he asked to further amend the county’s ethics policy to add a provision that would ban any commissioner from working in the public sector.

Giunchigliani is on leave from her job as a public schoolteacher while she serves on the commission. Collins’ proposal would prevent her from working during a one-year cooling off period after she leaves the commission.

Good policy for its own sake or a personal feud between powerful commissioners?

Giunchigliani said Collins asked privately if she could return to her job as a teacher. And if that’s what Collins was getting at with his amendment, she said, “then let’s put it out there that that’s what you’re trying to get at.”

The proposal would continue a long-running debate in Nevada. In 2004, some state lawmakers questioned whether public employees should be allowed to serve as legislators. And when she was in the state Assembly, Giunchigliani supported a bill that would require public employees to take unpaid leave while serving in the Legislature.

Giunchigliani said after Tuesday’s County Commission meeting, where both proposals were discussed: “I think it was aimed at my employment because I introduced this legislation” to ban lobbying by commissioners.

Collins may have felt targeted by Giunchigliani because her proposal came a few weeks after it surfaced that he had been hired to consult on behalf of Veolia Transportation Services, one of the companies in a months-long battle to win a bus contract from the Regional Transportation Commission. Veolia, which currently provides bus service for the commission, had been fighting First Transit for a contract to provide bus service for up to five years at a cost of more than $400 million.

Collins is not on the RTC board, but two of his fellow commissioners are.

Giunchigliani summed up her proposed ethics code amendment as a way to keep commissioners from being paid to lobby other elected officials.

“I’m not trying to stop anyone from going to work and talking, or talking to colleagues,” she said. “The key is being paid to do it, which makes it very uncomfortable … You get into that fine line where someone might say ‘I felt intimidated’ or ‘I couldn’t say no,’ ” if they are lobbied by a commissioner.

Collins also mentioned another issue: What about banning county commissioners’ spouses from lobbying the commission? What happens if a commissioner’s husband or wife is a lobbyist and comes before the commission on behalf of a client? Currently there’s no law against that.

That wouldn’t affect anyone on the current board. Giunchigliani’s husband, Gary Gray, is a political campaign consultant who has never addressed the commission while she has served there.

Commissioner Steve Sisolak asked for more information about that possibility, and whether any of the county’s ethics policy has teeth — if someone violates a policy, how are they punished?

In the end, Collins’ attempt to “get at” Giunchigliani through an amendment could lead to a county ethics code tougher than any in the state, Sisolak noted.

Commissioners voted to table the matter until their next meeting in December.

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