Backstory: Who's feeding at the trough?

By Michael Green

Asked whether state employees can serve in the Nevada Legislature, Attorney General Brian Sandoval issued an opinion saying yes, no and maybe. The Nevada Constitution, he said, bans those in the executive or judicial branches from serving in the Legislature. But, he added, this is only an opinion, and the Nevada Supreme Court should rule on it.

He also said teachers, police and firefighters may serve because they work for county and city governments, not the state, although the state constitution gives the Legislature the power to create and send funds to their employers.

After Sandoval issued his opinion, state Sen. Ray Rawson, a dental hygiene program director and professor at CCSN, chose to leave his state job. The wisdom of his decision was obvious when the R-J's report about it quoted his primary opponent, Assemblyman Bob Beers, claiming Rawson supported a 300 percent increase in state government. Thus, Rawson gave up his academic career to spend the next several months being lied about.

As for other state employees, Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani invoked democracy: If the voters want her, they should be able to elect her. State Sen. Dina Titus agreed, but added that since no one in the executive branch has the power to hire or fire her as a UNLV employee, she may not be affected, and when the constitution was written, no higher educational system existed in Nevada.

That's a problem. Some regents have claimed that the Higher Education System of Nevada is a fourth branch of government. It isn't, but the system is independent in many ways from the executive branch (and, given recent events, independent from reality, but that's another story). It wasn't even a gleam in the eye of Nevada's founding fathers when they wrote the document in 1864. Legally, Titus and other university and college employees have a strong point.

Now, my views are suspect. I am a CCSN professor. Thanks to my fellow state employees in the Legislature out to line our pockets, my medical costs have skyrocketed while my salary just leaped 4 percent, which I recently spent filling my gas tank.

But the debate over state employees serving in the Legislature could prove moot. Some hope to pass an initiative banning them from office. Indeed, they are so committed to this principle, they first sought this initiative only 30 years after then-Attorney General Robert List issued an opinion allowing state employees to serve in the Legislature. They acted after two-thirds of the Legislature and the governor backed tax increases to maintain our state government's status near the bottom in social services without disappearing entirely and to try to distribute the tax burden more fairly. This effort was so successful that Nevada ranks 49th in the number of state employees per capita, and the tax structure remains among the most ridiculous in the nation.

But what if the initiative doesn't get on the ballot or is voted down? If democracy is all that matters, and the democratic process doesn't work in favor of the initiative, its supporters can't exactly complain, especially with the Review-Journal's full resources slanting coverage in their favor.

Sandoval rivaled Solomon in splitting the difference. But he read the constitution a certain way, as all of us do. The problem is, how do you prefer to read it?

Ą In 1864, Nevadans agreed to renounce ownership of public lands and not to "impair, subvert or resist the Supreme Authority of the Government of the United States." That doesn't stop some Nevadans from overrunning federal land and threatening the lives of federal employees--to applause from some of our supposedly enlightened leaders. And if the U.S. Constitution guarantees equal protection, can state employees claim that any limitation Nevada imposes violates federal law?

Ą "Representation shall be apportioned according to population," it says in one place, but in another it says just more than one-third of the Legislature can veto what two-thirds want to do, which technically gives the 500,000 living in the rest of Nevada the ability to veto what 1.6 million living in Clark County want. Which is it?

Ą "Each House [of the Legislature] shall judge of the qualifications, elections and returns of its own members..." Then how can the same document say who can or cannot serve in the Legislature? What if legislators decide they want public employees serving among them?

You may think the Nevada Supreme Court was silly to toss the two-thirds legislative majority required for tax increases because another part of the constitution contradicted it. Granting the problems with the decision, constitutions can, in fact, be contradictory.

So am I, by the way. This tax-and-spend, liberal, loose constructionist will adhere strictly to the law. Lawmakers are guilty of conflicts of interest if they vote on what directly affects them--thus the real objection to state employees in the Legislature. But Beers, for example, is an accountant, so taxes affect him. State Sen. Ann O'Connell owns property, so property taxes affect her. If legislators live in Nevada, Nevada taxes affect them--in fact, so do all Nevada laws. Therefore, they have no right to vote on them, and I will file ethics complaints against all 63 legislators.

That's democracy and the law, folks. And they are supposed to work for everybody.