Newspaper column: Just say no to annual legislative sessions

Democrats in Carson City are beating this dead donkey again.

Ten of the 13 state Senate Democrats are pushing for annual legislative sessions instead of sessions every other year. Senate Joint Resolution 5 would amend the state Constitution, which currently calls for 120-calendar-day sessions in odd-numbered years, by establishing 90-legislative-day sessions in odd-numbered years and 60-legislative-day sessions in even numbered years. Similar measures failed in 2013, 2015 and 2017.

The measure would have to pass this session and again in 2021 before going to the voters in 2022. The voters nixed a similar measure in 1970 with 66.2 percent voting against annual sessions.

Currently lawmakers are only paid their $150-a-day salaries for the first 60 days of each session, though they receive per diem expenses for the entire session, which works out to about 96 working days. If SJR5 were to pass, they would receive salaries for 150 days instead of 60 days, essentially a 150 percent pay increase.

A fiscal note prepared by the Legislative Counsel Bureau estimates the change would raise the cost of legislative sessions from the current $20 million every two years to $33.3 million.

“Despite our tradition of biennial sessions it is time for a change. While this tradition made sense during periods when our population was much lower and our finances less complex, it no longer addresses the needs of a rapidly growing state with a multibillion-dollar budget operating in a global market,” state Sen. Joyce Woodhouse of Henderson said during a recent hearing on the resolution. “Our state simply cannot adequately address rapidly changing conditions, a complex budget and policy matters by meeting every other year. In the past 17 years alone, our general revenue fund has more than doubled. At the same time our responsibilities as legislatures have increased significantly.”

Imagine how much the revenue — taken from the pockets of hardworking Nevadans — would have grown if the voters had approved annual sessions half a century ago.

At the hearing state Sen. Heidi Gansert of Reno expressed concerns that annual sessions would make it more difficult for anyone but the well-off to serve. “How do we maintain a citizen Legislature where we have folks who come from all walks of life?” she asked. “This would still be part-time but you would have to take off every year, and so that would be a concern. Who would have employers who would allow them to do that or would this force in some cases only the more affluent to be able to afford to serve?”

Janine Hansen, state president of Nevada Families for Freedom, pointed out that under SJR5 the 60- and 90-legislative-day sessions could last for months if lawmakers meet only a couple of days a week. She pointed out that Utah, with a similar population as Nevada, has its lawmakers meet annually but for only 45 days each year, less than Nevada’s current 120-day sessions.

Hansen suggested the better way to allow lawmakers to handle the work load is to cut the number bills that may be introduced in half.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that in the early 1960s only 19 state legislatures met annually, while the rest met biennially. By the mid-1970s, the number of states meeting annually had jumped from 19 to 41. Today only Nevada, Montana, North Dakota and Texas still met biennially. Texas’ population is considerably larger than Nevada’s.

While Nevada does not have full-blown legislative sessions every year it does have standing committees of lawmakers who meet when not in session and are able to make funding and regulatory changes. The governor also has the power to call special legislative sessions, such as the ones called in recent years to dole out billions in tax breaks to electric car makers Telsa and Faraday Future. Just what we need more of, right?

NCLS points out in a list of arguments against annual sessions posted on its website that annual sessions inevitably lead to a spiraling of legislative costs — for the lawmakers as well as the staffers who must be brought together twice as often. Also, biennial sessions allow lawmakers to work with and associate with their constituents. Another argument is that there are enough laws already limiting people’s liberty.

Lawmakers should dump this expensive and counterproductive measure now.

A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Legislative building in Carson City. (AP pix)

Newspaper column: Do not shroud public employee pensions in secrecy

Some lawmakers in Carson City are pushing a bill that basically declares that it is none of your business how your tax money is spent. Senate Bill 224 would make the names of recipients of pensions through the Public Employees’ Retirement System secret.

The first glimpse at the kinds of duplicity this bill invites is the fact that two of the three chief sponsors of the bill — state Sens. David Parks and Joyce Woodhouse — are currently drawing six-figure pensions from PERS, a fact that would not be known if this bill were already in law.

At a recent hearing on the bill, the third sponsor, state Sen. Julia Ratti, argued that PERS benefits are set aside for the public employees’ future use and asked, “At what point is public servant no longer a public person?”

The answer is: When that person no longer obliges the public to guarantee that pension. Right now the taxpayers are on the hook for $40 billion in unfunded liabilities, when standard accounting practices are used to make the calculation. Never mind that the taxpayers paid half of the pension contributions for that government worker retiree and all of the rather princely salary that public employee used for their half of the contribution.

Perhaps the most egregious argument made in the hearing is that the bill would cut the cost of litigation. It was PERS itself that created that cost by trying to skirt court rulings that stated the names of public pensioners and their pension amounts are public records under the Nevada public records law, which states that its purpose is to foster democratic principles by providing taxpayers with access to public records.

After the state Supreme Court ruled the records were public, PERS changed the way it kept the records, prompting Chief Justice Michael Douglas to suggest PERS had “gone out of its way to violate the spirit of the law.”

The bill’s backers are still arguing that revealing the names of pensioners might expose them to identity theft and fraud. The state Supreme Court dismissed that claim in its 2013 ruling by saying, “Because PERS failed to present evidence to support its position that disclosure of the requested information would actually cause harm to retired employees or even increase the risk of harm, the record indicates that their concerns were merely hypothetical and speculative. Therefore, because the government’s interests in nondisclosure in this instance do not clearly outweigh the public’s presumed right to access, we conclude that the district court did not err in balancing the interests involved in favor of disclosure.”

During a hearing on SB224, Robert Fellner, policy director for the Nevada Policy Research Institute, countered that the publication of public pension information has enabled the public to correct abuses of such systems. A tip to California’s fraud hotline resulted in the system recovering more than $200,000, Fellner noted, causing CalPERS to release a statement praising “the great value of the public’s assistance in CalPERS’ efforts to protect the state pension system from fraud, waste, and abuse.”

In another example, Fellner noted that the importance of disclosing names was highlighted when a Los Angeles television station discovered that a police officer who was drawing a disability pension from one city was working full-time as a police officer for another agency.

“This type of abuse will be impossible to detect if SB224 becomes law and makes secret the names of those drawing tax-funded public pensions,” he testified, adding that 20 states maintain online public pension databases.

The law that set up PERS states: “It is the policy of this State to provide, through the Public Employees’ Retirement System: A reasonable base income to qualified employees who have been employed by a public employer and whose earning capacity has been removed or has been substantially reduced by age or disability.”

Yet in a previous court case NPRI’s attorney Joseph Becker observed that there are retirees in their 40’s collecting six-figure disbursements from PERS, while still earning income from other sources. “Only through the publication of name, pension payout and related data can the public better understand how the system works and the legislative purpose be effectuated,” he wrote.

Lawmakers should reject SB224’s effort to blinder the public. If not, Gov. Steve Sisolak — who once told a newspaper columnist, this one, that public employee contracting should be transparent and that the public employee pension system was overdue for reform — should veto it.

A version of this column appeared this week in many of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel and the Lincoln County Record — and the Elko Daily Free Press.