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EDITORIAL
Target rich
Tools
Nevada -- it's a target-rich environment.
We're sure the new litigation arm of the Nevada Policy Research Institute will find it to be so.
The nonprofit, free-market think tank has created the Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation and named attorney Joe Becker its initial litigator, though they hope to establish a team of attorneys eventually.
Andy Matthews, vice president for communications at NPRI, described the areas for potential litigation as the First and Second amendments, property rights, privacy and governmental separation of power. We would encourage Mr. Becker to make the latter an early priority.
The Nevada Legislature, which holds the power of the purse over virtually every local political entity, is chock full of professors, teachers and city and county employees who are given months-long leaves from their jobs to go sit in judgment in Carson City to decide on their employers' future well-being.
This occurs despite the fact Article 3, Section 1 of the Nevada Constitution states unequivocally, "The powers of the Government of the State of Nevada shall be divided into three separate departments, -- the Legislative, -- the Executive and the Judicial; and no persons charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any functions, appertaining to either of the others ..."
In 2004, then-Attorney General Brian Sandoval, now governor-elect, issued an opinion that employees of the state may not serve in the Legislature but employees of local governments may. The opinion relied on a California court ruling, because Nevada's own constitution was modeled on California's.
The problem with that is California has home rule, while local governments in Nevada exist at the behest and whim of the Legislature, meaning legislators have nearly unchecked power over the operations of local governments.
Sandoval's opinion explains the separation of power concept by quoting Justice Louis Brandeis: "The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy."
In an interview Friday, Mr. Becker described the objectives of the new CJCL as addressing encroachments on the Bill of Rights, as well as, "separation of powers, leaving to the states what's the order of the states and ... making sure that the legislative, executive and judicial branch maintain their separate and proper roles."
As we said, it's a target-rich environment.
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Bill: You cannot serve two masters. Employees of big business are assumed to be beholden to their employers if elected, but for some reason public employees are not viewed the same way. But this is secondary. This primary problem is the constitutional issue pointed out here.
When given a choice between dumb and dumber in 2010 governor election, we all lose.
Titus is the poster child for a teacher who should have stayed out of politics.....now that she is temporarily out she gets appointed to a board so she can keep her hand in while she plans where to go next in her pointless political wandering....sad that the legislature is reepatedly subjected to public workers who should not be there in the first place...EVERYTHING they vote on is an actual or potential conflict of interest.....so properly they should ALL recuse themselves from ANY voting....
Bill,
I think the issue in the editorial is not that the "butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker" need to be pushed aside for lawyers, it is that the teacher, the policeman and the professor need to be pushed aside for the butcher and the baker. The RJ has always advocated that public employees who are part of the executive branch (which in a non-home ruled state like Nevada include local governments employees)have a conflict of interest when they have a dual role as legislators overseeing the executive branch and are also employees of the executive branch. The public employees that are also legislators are exactly the people you refer to whose interest are "not what the general public needs and wants".
As for public employees being part of the Carson City "gang", I thought we have a representative republic........Will we all be happy when all elected officials are all lawyers? I think not.....The butcher, the baker, and the candelstick makers need to be in those offices....It would be nice to have members in the state legislature that other legislators could go to for "what's happening " information from other than lobbyists who have special interests, and in most cases are not the "real " people who have "real " jobs and usually their interests (lobbyists) are not what the general public needs and wants
If you cannot read between the Sandoval lines, he will trade off home rule for pushing programs to the counties. There is only so much money to be raped from the coffers, but now he will be moving obligations to the counties. It's accounting smoke and mirrors, pushing your debt to the counties reducing your balance sheet. But when it is all said and done the role of Carson City will evaporate for Clark County. Just like Chicago doesn't care about Springfield, San Francisco doesn't worry about Sacramento and Manhattan doesn't care about Albany.