Nevada Ethics Commission Director Stacy Jennings asked the Senate Finance Committee today to permanently fund the legal researcher approved by Interim Finance and to add a full time legal investigator in Las Vegas.
She said a larger percentage of the commission's complaints and ethics cases are coming from Southern Nevada and the positions are badly needed.
The state's Interim Finance Committee created a Las Vegas office last year to handle the growing caseload down there. The increase will raise the total commission staff from three to five employees in addition to the appointed eight-member commission.
Jennings pointed out that two-thirds of her budget comes from assessments levied against local governments in Nevada since two-thirds of the cases involve local officials. That assessment was created two years ago after state officials discovered many local governments were getting out of the handling ethics complaints themselves. The result was a 142 percent increase in the Ethics Commission caseload in two years.
If approved, the changes will boost the ethics Commission total budget from $419,000 to more than $600,000.
Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or at 687-8750.