Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Barred from fundraising during session, lawmakers still have some time

Carson City

Michelle Rindels / AP

This Dec. 16, 2015, photo shows the Nevada Senate beginning a special legislative session in Carson City to consider incentives for electric carmaker Faraday Future.

Sixty-three state lawmakers will gather Monday morning in Carson City to consider a number of tourism-related measures, including public funding for an NFL stadium.

A special session of the Legislature has been long in the making: First, it was thought a session would be called in September. Two weeks ago, Gov. Brian Sandoval announced he would call lawmakers into session sometime between today, Oct. 7, and next Thursday, Oct. 13. On Wednesday, he said the session will start at 8 a.m. Monday.

The only thing that’s left is for the governor to issue the proclamation officially calling the Legislature into session, a sort of dotting of the I’s and crossing of the T’s. The proclamation document will also list what specifically lawmakers may consider during the session and exclude anything else.

But the proclamation has one other piece of significance, particularly for lawmakers fighting for re-election: The day after the governor issues the proclamation, lawmakers may no longer solicit or accept any campaign contributions, a ban on fundraising that extends until 15 days after the special session ends.

The governor has said that he plans to issue the proclamation Sunday, which means the ban on fundraising will begin Monday.

That gives lawmakers four extra days to fundraise than if the governor had issued the proclamation on Wednesday, when he announced the session’s start date. (Several lawmakers in interviews over the past few weeks noted the fundraising ban as one reason they were hesitant to have a special session before the election.)

Still, Sandoval’s office said the timing of the proclamation has nothing to do with giving lawmakers extra time to fundraise. Sandoval’s spokeswoman, Mari St. Martin, said that the governor is taking as much time as possible to finalize the session’s agenda, which will be included in the proclamation, to “ensure it includes the full scope of what’s necessary to complete the state’s business without inviting opportunities for disruption.”

“Any political considerations, like fundraising deadlines, are always a distant second to the policy agenda or economic opportunities that the governor believes merits the extraordinary call of a special session,” St. Martin said.

Waiting to issue the proclamation until the day before the session also allows the governor to tweak the scope of the session until it begins. For the three special sessions the governor has called, Sandoval issued proclamations for two the day before the session and for one the day of.

St. Martin noted that the governor decided only this morning that the special session will only focus on the tourism-related recommendations, including public funding for an NFL stadium and to expand and renovate the Las Vegas Convention Center. Wednesday, the governor said that fixing a budget shortfall for education would also be part of the session.

Legislators have also known for months that a special session was in the works so, theoretically, they should have had adequate time to schedule their fundraising plans around a session. But in some of the most competitive races, where every fundraising dollar counts, the fundraising ban may put incumbents seeking re-election at a disadvantage to their non-lawmaker opponents.

The statute regulating fundraising before and after a special session was created in 2003, put forward as part of an omnibus bill from the Committee on Elections, Procedures, and Ethics.

Chris Giunchigliani, then-assemblywoman and chair of the committee, said she requested the language drafted after realizing that there was nothing in state law regulating fundraising around a special session, only language prohibiting fundraising 30 days before and after a regular session.

She proposed to the committee that the number of days be cut in half to a 15-day ban before and after a special session. (Under statute, the ban on the front-end of the session is shortened if the proclamation is issued within 15 days of a session beginning and starts the day after the proclamation is issued.)

The goal of cleaning up the statute, she said, was to protect the public and to protect the candidate running from a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest in accepting any donations around a session.

Giunchigliani called the way the statute has played out this year “awkward” because of how close a special session is happening before an election. A special session to approve tax breaks and incentives for Tesla in September 2014 also interrupted fundraising before the mid-term elections, but wasn’t as close to election day as this year’s session.

The fact that lawmakers can continue to fundraise until the session begins also gives Giunchigliani pause.

“You’ve got so many people lobbying on this piece of garbage special session,” said Giunchigliani, now a Clark County commissioner and one of the more vocal critics of the public contributing taxpayer dollars to the stadium. “And lawmakers are still collecting dollars, both Democrats and Republicans, through Sunday.”

But she also sympathized with the constraints that the statute puts on lawmakers running in tight races.

“The harder part is if you’re a contested incumbent, your opponent can still fundraise. You can’t restrict them because they’re not in office,” Giunchigliani said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just more unfortunate.”

More generally, she lamented the fact that a special session could be called so close to the election, taking candidates away from talking with their voters and forcing them to rush into making important decisions. She suggested that the Legislature might consider banning special sessions within 30 days of an election in the future.

“There is nothing emergency-wise here, period,” Giunchigliani said.

UNLV history professor Michael Green called the whole statute prohibiting fundraising 15 days before and after a special session “ridiculous.”

“It’s so cosmetic and transparent the idea that you’re avoiding impropriety by doing that,” Green said, adding sarcastically, “Yeah, I mean you’re not fundraising during this brief period. That means that we’ve eliminated the whole problem.”

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