It cannot be that tough to fix Nevada’s campaign finance disclosure laws

Well, tell me something I don’t know. Nevada’s campaign disclosure laws and the reports actually have grown worse since I started paying close attention 20 years ago.

Various legislators as politically disparate as state Sen. Bob Beers on the conservative side and former Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani on the liberal side have offered bills to make disclosure more complete or easier to understand, and every time the bills were surgically disemboweled by those who don’t want anyone to follow the money trail.

With scant success, the state’s top election officials have offered bills to improve campaign finance laws. I’m hoping Secretary of State Ross Miller can make a difference, but his first effort in the 2007 Legislature, a bill to add campaign finance reports before early voting, went kerplunk. State Senate Bill 494 didn’t even come up for a vote in the state Senate Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections.

The senators’ attitude: Why change it? The public doesn’t care.

Committee Chairwoman Barbara Cegavske and others said when they walk door to door, nobody ever asks them about their campaign reports. The only people interested are their political rivals and the news media, she said.

Thus it was no shocker to read that Nevada is one of 14 states with a failing grade for campaign finance disclosure in a 2007 study by the Campaign Disclosure Project.

Our legislators don’t want you to know who is paying for their races. They’d prefer you be totally clueless.

They say it’s too much trouble or too burdensome for elected officials to give a lot of detail on those forms where they report taking in millions. Instead, they’re content to allow people to scribble illegible reports, minus even the most basic information, like contributors’ jobs and employers.

The forms are so pitiful, they are close to lies.

There are plenty of examples, but here’s one: When Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson ran for governor, his final report filed in January 2007 reported he raised $2.6 million and spent $4.5 million. Wow. He was $2 million in the hole? Actually, no. The way the reports are written, the $1.8 million he raised in 2005 doesn’t appear on that report. Cumulative doesn’t really mean cumulative, as a sensible person would interpret it. The deception is not Gibson’s fault, it’s the way the reports are written.

It can’t be that tough to fix our miserable campaign disclosure laws if Washington state, California and Oregon can do it, and they’re the best three, according to the Campaign Disclosure Project. Nevada, of course, is near the bottom of the list at No. 44.

The project evaluated the laws, the electronic filing program, the content and accessibility of the information, and we failed in all those areas. The fourth area, the ease of using and searching the information, earned Nevada a D.

The most frustrating thing is that the secretary of state’s database of campaign reports isn’t searchable. So if you want to know every candidate a particular company or individual donated to, you would have to do it by hand, looking at every report.

Miller said Nevada’s rating by the Campaign Disclosure Project is absolutely embarrassing and promised he’ll pitch another package to lawmakers in 2009, including increasing penalties for violations. But only legislators can make law.

Miller, a former prosecutor, has submitted a list of candidates who failed to file their reports to Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto for civil prosecution. They’ll get one more chance to file their reports before legal proceedings begin. And he wants to strengthen those penalties.

I’d much rather he work on crafting sensible forms, having a searchable database and overcoming legislators’ resistance.

The legislative incumbents vote down open government and ethics bills, but apparently they don’t hear from you and ignore me.

Often, a column like this might include a comment from Craig Walton, a retired university professor who with civility and grace argued for transparency and ethics for decades before his recent death at 72.

The founder and president of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, Walton never lost his cautious optimism that eventually, legislators would do the right thing to improve Nevada’s laws governing ethics and campaign disclosure.

I’ll miss him … and his enduring and endearing optimism.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275.