Keeping an eye on legislators' conflicts of interest

Oh, we've got problems in Nevada.

I was reminded of some of them this week by an outfit called the Center for Public Integrity, which describes itself as a "watchdog in the corridors of power."

The center has put together an impressive report on conflicts of interest in state legislatures. I'll touch on a few of the findings, but I recommend you check out the report for yourself at the center's Web site, publicintegrity.org.

One of Nevada's problems, as you might suspect, is the influence of casinos on state politics.

The Center for Public Integrity's report picks out Mark James, a state senator whose law firm "represents at least four companies involved in gaming," according to the report.

In 1997, the Judiciary Committee chaired by James passed the controversial bill allowing casinos to write off their complimentary tokens as tax deductions.

That's kind of old news by now. But it did take the Center for Public Integrity a couple of years to pull together a list of conflicts of interest in all 50 states.

Anyway, the report talks some more about James and also about a Carson City senator, Mark Amodei, who works for a law firm that represents casinos in Carson City. Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio's law firm also works for gaming companies, as does Sen. Terry Care's and Assemblyman Greg Brower's.

They voted on legislation that affected the gaming industry. Their reasoning, in general, was that the legislation didn't favor one casino over another and applied to the industry as a whole.

The same kind of reasoning goes on whenever there's a dustup between Sen. Joe Neal, who wants to increase taxes on the gaming industry, and lawmakers who oppose it.

According to Paul Brown, director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, the casino industry runs Nevada's Legislature.

"What they've done is they've bought the candidates," Brown was quoted in the Center for Public Integrity's report.

The report cites James as the top recipient of campaign contributions from the gamining industry in 1998 at $49,000. Amodei was ninth on the list at about $15,000, according to PLAN.

It won't come as a surprise to anyone in Nevada, I think, that the gaming industry is the No. 1 player in state politics. It's the No. 1 player in the state - period.

The Nevada Legislature would be hard-pressed to come up with a piece of legislation that doesn't somehow affect casinos or the Nevada Resort Association or International Game Technology, the slot-machine maker.

I have no intention of defending the gaming industry - and, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that casinos advertise in this newspaper and therefore help to pay my salary - but it seems like such an easy target.

The center's study is called "Hidden Agenda," but I don't thing the casinos do a very good job of hiding their agenda at all. They want low taxes, cheap labor, favorable laws and the occasional piece of public property that lies in the way of expansion plans.

It's our duty - the voters, and the newspaper as well - to stay informed of who is receiving campaign contributions from the gaming industry, whose law firms are involved in gaming-industry law, and which lobbyist takes which legislator to lunch.

That's the best way to make sure anybody's agenda doesn't stay hidden for very long. The Center for Public Integrity ranked Nevada 27th in the nation - decidedly middle of the pack - for its laws on forcing lawmakers to disclose possible conflicts of interest.

What came to mind as a read the center's expose on gaming's influence on the Legislature is the fact that just about everybody who serves in Nevada's Senate and Assembly has a real job somewhere else.

There were several teachers, a half-dozen real-estate agents, a handful of small-business owners, some state employees, a couple of ranchers, a nuclear physicist and a waitress in the 1999 Legislature.

They have potential conflicts of interest, too. They don't often turn up on the national radar the way gambling does. (It was interesting that the report didn't mention Joe Dini, the speaker of the Assembly and the only guy in the Legislature who actually owns a casino.)

OK, now that we've bashed Nevada for awhile, let's take a quick look at what the report found in some other states.

- In Oregon, 15 of the 58 legislators have put their spouses on the public payroll as "legislative aides." Then they voted to increase the pay of "legislative aides" by 60 percent. Thanks, honey.

- In North Carolina, House Minority Leader Leo Daughtry is a lawyer, so he sits on the Judiciary Committee.

And he owns a fertilizer company, so he sits on the Environment Committee. And he owns stock in Carolina Power & Light, so he sits on the Public Utilities Committee. And while he's at it, he is part-owner of two tobacco warehouses and sits on the Select Committee on the Tobacco Settlement. This is one busy guy.

- Out of 5,716 state legislators throughout the United States, nearly one in four receives income from a government agency other than the legislature. In many cases, the report says, they work for an agency that the legislature funds. And we wonder why government grows.

- In Illinois, Sen. Kirk Dillard is not only a legislator - he's a registered lobbyist.

Although there are some head-shakers among the examples, the truth is that everybody is going to have a conflict some of the time on some issues. The alternative is to have professional politicians, or people who have no ties to anything.

The best we can ask is that lawmakers disclose their conflicts of interest and that they not vote or advocate when there is a direct benefit.

"Ultimately, it is up to the taxpayer to decide whether a legislator is operating in good faith or not," said Charles Lewis, executive director for the Center for Public Integrity.

He might as well have added: You can't legislate integrity.

Barry Smith is managing editor of the Nevada Appeal.