Vol. 3, No. 2
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November 15, 2005
Nevada's Online State News Journal
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CRIMINAL DEFENSE |
COPYWRITING
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Feature Story:
Feature Story:
Nevada Campaign Finance Law Among Nation's Worst
Lack Of Meaningful Disclosure Opens Door To Political Distrust
by Johnny Gunn
The 2006 political cycle is already shifting into high gear, and once again it is the voters of Nevada who will be left in the dark over who might be trying to buy a candidate. It's also the voters who will have every right to think that just about every candidate is being bought. The reason for this was made forcefully clear by a report issued recently discussing the State of Disclosure in Nevada. The report issues education type grades and Nevada earned a solid F. "Nevada's biggest weakness," the report states, "is its disclosure law."
Campaign finance disclosure should be such a simple thing for a voter to become familiar with, simple in that going to the Secretary of State's web site one should be able to access a data base that says candidate A received this much money in campaign donations from these people and concerns and spent this much money on such things as are needed for a campaign. It doesn't work that way in Nevada.
In the words of the recent report, "Nevada's grade for disclosure content accessibility suffers from a lack of searchable data online, or even records that can be sorted or downloaded." In fact, these disclosure reports, known as Contributions and Expenses Reports (C&Es) are hand written, sometimes in pencil following no particular order, and copied onto the web site.
Nevada will have a new Secretary of State following the 2006 elections (Dean Heller is not eligible to run for re-election because of term limits), and it is possible that things might change. Heller has been blaming the legislature for not passing laws to change the disclosure formats, but for the past eight years he hasn't had to have a legislative mandate to build a C&E data base that would offer the information that is most needed when looking at a candidate's financial program.
For instance in the expenses part of the reports most candidate simply list their advertising and public relations agency as their primary expense. Wonderful! That tells us so much. There is no provision for what is called subvendor payments, that is, what did the advertising agency spend the money for. In the contributions part of the reports, much is left out such as occupation of the donor, relationship to other donors, employer of donor, and cumulative amounts donated.
As an example, Joe Blow is the general manager of company A and donates $10,000, his wife donates $10,000, each of his floor bosses donate $10,000, each of their wives donate $10,000, and the money is bundled with that from several other like companies, and delivered by a spokesman who makes sure that the candidate is aware that this industry just donated $150,000. No pressure? You can't find detail like this in the current forms.
The C&E report then has these names scattered all over 25 or 30 pages, and no one has any idea that a single industry just financed a complete campaign. In the words of the recent report, "What the state's disclosure web site does offer is scanned images of reports that have been filed on paper, many of which have been handwritten." The report continues, "These are accessed through indexes of reports organized by year, rather than by committee, which means that viewing all of one particular candidate's filings requires site visitors to search through eight separate directories coving the years 1998-2005."
This is the primary reason that very few people ever fully understand a candidate's financial situation. Very few people will take the time and effort to even think of doing that. If the reports were designed as a data base of information, and these are very common procedures, a report could be understandable. Nowhere in election law does it state that only the legislature can design the contributions and expenses reports.
The law does say these reports are to be filed with the Secretary of State, but the current Secretary has been more than lax in seeing to it that this is done. An entire political party has all but refused to fill out the reports and turn them in. The Independent American Party (IAP) candidates generally refuse to either fill out the reports, or when they do file a report it is blank. To falsify a report is a felony; to not file a report is a felony.
Why aren't there criminal charges on file? Why haven't ethics violations been filed? Is someone being protected?
On the reports, a candidate doesn't have to offer proof of a contribution or expense. All it takes is a simple statement that says the candidate states under penalty of perjury that the form is correct. Secretary Heller continues to insist in his own words, his "office is not statutorily provided with the authority to perform an audit of a candidate's C&E report." Heller insists that only if a complaint is filed can his office investigate.
Heller told The Nevada Observer two years ago, "If it appears the statutes have been violated, the SOS may conduct an investigation and cause appropriate proceedings to be instituted in court, or the SOS may refer the alleged violation to the AG's office for possible legal action." But he also insists he doesn't have the authority to conduct an audit unless a complaint is filed. Heller says simply being made aware of a possible violation will not be enough for him to begin an audit. A complaint must be filed.
Very few complaints are filed simply because worming one's way through hand written C&E reports can take days just to look at one candidate. An example of how a data base would solve most of these problems was conducted by The Nevada Observer.
The C&E reports from the campaign of former Attorney General Brian Sandoval were fed into a data base created by TNO's publisher David Thompson. We picked Sandoval since he was the state's top cop. Of all the C&Es, his should have been perfect. Of course the discrepancies we found were blamed on his CPA firm.
One donor had given $15,000, but without the data base it would not have been picked up. That is $5,000 more than the law allows. Another donor had given $12,500. The law is pretty clear on this matter, and using Heller's own words, "A candidate can receive a lump sum contribution of $10,000. Five thousand for the primary, another $5,000 for the general. If a candidate loses in the primary, $5,000 must be returned to the contributor."
All in all we found the attorney general to have at least three violations of receiving more money than the law allows. Interestingly, the donor giving more than the law allows is also liable for the violation, a felony.
Using the data base file created by Thompson the contributions could be looked at by date received and by contributor. Adding a couple of fields to that and a complete financial picture comes into view. The expenses reports must be changed to incorporate the subvendor payments. To simply list a public relations firm as your primary expense tells no one anything.
To put it in a little more understandable language, the perception of the general public that politicians are crooks to begin with is underlined in red when the state's election laws are written in such a manner that it gives such thought credence.
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