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May 27, 2005
Lawmakers discuss course in ethics for newly elected
By ELIZABETH WHITE Newly appointed public officers also would take the course under AB530, already endorsed by the Assembly, which requires the classroom stint within nine months for those who have filed financial disclosure forms. "You can run into these situations when you've got citizen boards and legislatures ... (they) have to have some sort of training," said Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas. "I really believe that." The bill came before the Senate Finance Committee this week because the Assembly's amendment to add the course, approved by the state Ethics Commission, will take some money: nearly $8,000 additional in the coming fiscal year and nearly $2,000 each year thereafter. Ethics Commission Executive Director Stacy Jennings said the money would go for travel expenses to provide the training throughout the state and to set up a Web-based training program through the Department of Information Technology that would include pages of information followed by multiple-choice quiz sections. The course may be required of as many as 1,200 appointed and elected public officers during the six months after a statewide general election, Jennings stated. Jennings also said state law wouldn't be violated if someone refused to take the course, but if an ethics complaint were filed, the refusal could be held against an official who didn't take the classes. "So we need to track who is taking the course," she said. Dan Musgrove, a lobbyist for Clark County, said the county has set up ethics training for some of its employees but that it's up to lawmakers whether to make the requirement statewide. The bill was originally requested on behalf of Clark County to put a number of other ethics provisions into state statute, including allowing cities and counties to require a cooling-off period for former officers during which they couldn't lobby the board on which they served and clarifying what constitutes a "willful" violation of ethics laws. The committee took no action on the bill, and the measure would likely have to go before the Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee before moving to the full Senate. Jennings noted that the concept of an ethics course is nothing new. The 1999 Legislature put into state statute a requirement for the commission to provide training on request for public officers and employees, and Jennings said she makes 25 such presentations a year. Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, only half-joked that it would be appropriate for her to amend this bill with provisions in a "double-dipping" measure she proposed that failed in the Assembly, never even receiving a hearing. The bill, SB129, would have required public employees to take an unpaid leave of absence while serving in the Nevada Legislature. |
