There's A Wrong Time And A Right Time To Ask The Question

But Ask You Must, For It's Your Pocket Providing The Coin

by Johnny Gunn

It's Election Day morning and two men (or women) arrive at their precinct, make themselves known to the poll workers, and walk briskly to the electronic voting machine, each holding their paper ballot from which election workers believe people make marks as to their preferences, and the discs to be inserted in the machine.

Citizen A looks at his paper ballot, wonders to himself: who the hell are these people? Does "I" mean independent, or maybe something else?

Citizen B glances at his paper ballot, remembers the preferences he made as the campaigning went on, touches the screen for each race, and walks home, chiding himself for not bringing his 10-year-old child along to see how this thing called voting works.

Citizen A, stymied over names of people running for city council says to himself for the umpteenth time, who are these people? Finally in desperation, he simply stabs his finger at a couple of names he thinks he's heard before, and gets the hell out of there.

Later that evening citizens A and B have cocktails at a nearby steak house. Vote did you? You bet, never miss. You? Ya sure, you betcha. Citizen A then gives himself away by confirming what happens all too often. Yeah, he says, I voted for the independents. No party men for me. Citizen B knowing the "I" stands for incumbent and that the city council races are non partisan just shakes his head, and wanders off wondering how many other thousands will help keep the crooks in office.

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Some Questions For Our Leaders And For Those That Wannabe

No Forward Progress As Far As Election Law Reform This Legislative Session. Why?

by Johnny Gunn

Excuse me, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not a club.

The current legislature is looking at some ethics reform measures and that's a good thing. Nevada's ethics laws simply are not effective, rarely bring changes, and are all but laughed at by elected officials around the state.

Why hasn't the legislature taken a close look at C&E reports and how easy it is to get around what the law says should be done? Think Secretary of State not filing complaints, think Independent American Party (IAP) members not filing papers, think how easy it is to bundle expenses. Isn't it interesting that ethics and election law are looked at as separate entities? You know, hide those expenses and it isn't the same as committing a lie, a felony. Hide contributions by way of putting things on different pages under different names, and it isn't really a felony. Right?

One more step? Yes, remember the legislature is there to do our business, not theirs. The people in Carson City are there to do the business of Nevada, and when we say Nevada that is you and me, not the business of the legislature, that is, them. The concept of why the legislature is there gets set aside sometimes. Nevada belongs to us, that is, everyone living here, legally or not. We are Nevadans, and we have elected them, that is the Legislature, there to represent us.

Recently the Legislative Counsel Bureau quit publishing digests to go along with their publishing of introduced legislation. Nevada Revised Statutes requires digests be published with the introduced legislation, but a caveat allows that if there is a relatively good reason not to, they don't have to. You know, kind of like, you are required to stop at the stoplight, unless of course, you're in a real hurry, or after all, you don't absolutely have to.

Scott Wasserman at the Legislative Counsel Bureau (LCB) says they are the people responsible for those digests and told the Nevada Observer that he uses the digest to make sure he knows what he's talking about when he has to testify before legislative committees. He's one that should be seeing to it the digests are there.

Assemblywoman Heidi Gansert (R-Reno) said she is getting the digests on her legislation at her committee hearings. Other legislators, assembly and senate, have said they don't get the digests. The legislation that is published on the LCB web site has digests for some legislation, not for most. The only question that comes to mind is, why?

Why do some legislators get digests published by the LCB and other legislators don't? And even more important, why doesn't every single piece of legislation that is published by the LCB come with a digest?

What we have right now is bias. Some legislators are on the inside and get digests? Those others are not on the A list and get none? And you and me, those of us who are responsible for the legislature to be there in the first place, get none? Not only are we responsible for legislators being there, sometimes they seem to forget the only reason they are there is for us.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Nevada Legislature, may we take this opportunity to remind you, and those who work for you, you are not members of a private little club, responsible only to yourselves. We are taking notes, we will remember two years from now, and we don't need term limits to weed out those not responsible to us.