Shedding light on campaign finance

Maybe Dean Heller is being too darn idealistic. Or maybe he's just doing his job and expecting fellow state officials to do the same.

The secretary of state lashed out this week against former attorney general Frankie Sue Del Papa for letting 15 candidates from the 2000 election get away with failing to file campaign finance disclosures.

The statute of limitations has passed, so the 15 -- all from Southern Nevada -- will never be held accountable.

It's Heller's job to notify the Attorney General's Office when candidates fail to file the necessary forms, something they promise to do when they decide to run for office. Heller did his job.

Prosecuting them is up to the attorney general. Del Papa sued 18 of 33 who missed the final deadlines. She didn't do her job on 15 of them.

Her explanation was interesting, in that she said some of the fines were so small -- $225 -- that it didn't make "economic sense" to spend the efforts of her staff to try to collect.

If that's the case, why have a law? For that matter, why have an attorney general?

The economic cost-benefit ratio of requiring candidates to disclose their financial contributions and expenditures to the voting public is a concept that hadn't occurred to us. Perhaps we're being too darn idealistic as well.

Del Papa's other comments in defense of herself were even more interesting. She said the secretary of state has a reputation for exaggeration and suggested that Heller was picking on her to create publicity for a possible run for Congress.

"Maybe he thinks his candle is going to burn brighter by dimming somebody else's," she told reporters.

That could be. Or maybe he was trying to shed a little light in the darkness.