The shrapnel flying over term limits

By Jon Ralston

Friday, May 23, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, whose career may be terminated before he gets his 30 years in, says 2010.

Spinmeister Sig Rogich, who launched Woodbury’s distinguished career by whispering in an appointing governor’s ear 27 years ago, says 2010.

And others potentially affected by term limits, including school board members and regents, also say 2010.

Indeed, since term limits were passed in 1996 after being proposed by Rogich, most everyone thought the clock didn’t start ticking until 1998, causing the first casualties in 2010. But don’t include Secretary of State Ross Miller and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who have wound the clock ahead and set off a political time bomb that could hurl shrapnel far and wide. Miller, with Cortez Masto providing the legitimacy for his actions, is trying to boot Woodbury and others, saying that most everyone has misinterpreted a 12-year-old opinion by then-Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa.

You remember her? She’s the attorney general who once came up with what past Gov. Grant Sawyer remarked to me was quite the tortured definition of “years” to ensure then-Gov. Bob Miller could serve what some saw as a constitutionally prohibited third term. (Miller had served the last half of Richard Bryan’s term when the latter went to the U.S. Senate, and then won election to two terms on his own, the second after Del Papa opined he could run.)

Indeed, the ex-attorney general may be singularly responsible for more history-changing moves than anyone in state annals — crafting the controversial Miller opinion that made him the state’s longest-serving governor, not running against Kenny Guinn for governor after being ahead by 20 points in polls, not running for a U.S. Senate seat against John Ensign that she might have won and, now, offering a term limit opinion whose interpretation could rearrange the political matrix.

As happens only in this world, the maneuvers have spawned all manner of conspiracy theories, including the notion that Miller is doing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bidding so term limits eventually can be undone by the state Supreme Court. Cue the ominous music.

The opinion itself is as clear as a Jim Gibbons disquisition on hydrology. Penned by Del Papa deputy Kateri Cavin a few weeks before term limits passed, its analysis ended with this: “Since the effective date of the petition would be November 27, 1996 (the day the vote became official), the term limitations will not apply to affected officials elected in the 1996 general election. If approved, term limits would be in effect for the 1997 municipal elections, and the 1998 primary and general elections, and so on.”

So there you have it, right? Not quite.

The next paragraph, under the “Conclusion” rubric, says: “If the voters approve the initiative to limit terms of state and local officers in the general election in November 1996 only periods of service commencing after November 27, 1996, will be counted as a term for limitation purposes.”

That’s clear, too, because the “periods of service” for those elected in 1996 begin in 1997 when they are sworn into office. So therein lies the rub — and it is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way.

The only way to thread the legal needle here is to argue that the term “affected officials” cited at the end of the analysis refers to everyone but state lawmakers, who are by law deemed to take office the day they are elected. They are in a special class here, that is, above everyone else, treated differently from everyone else? I bet the public will love that explanation.

This will be a feast for lawyers, who will raise equal protection claims because of the Gang of 63’s exalted status. And one lawyer who will have a say is District Attorney David Roger, who has to decide whether he should take the venerable Woodbury and others to court to try to oust them. And if he doesn’t, what does the attorney general do then — just say the process has taken its course or stand up for the legal plank she has pushed Miller out on?

I am no lawyer, just an observer both marveling and scoffing at the fine legal mess that has been created here by a placebo fed to rabid anti-incumbent voters 12 years ago by a man (Rogich) who has put as many incumbents into office as anyone in state annals. It’s a bad idea whose time has come, either now or two years from now — unless of course the Supreme Court tosses the entire idea, which is really what Reid and others, now including the blindsided Woodbury, hope will occur.