Separation of powers

For decades, scores of state lawmakers have — with cavalier indifference — willfully ignored one of the fundamental tenets of the Nevada Constitution.

Article 3, Section 1 of the state’s guiding document codifies that the government shall consist of the legislative, executive and judicial branches and “no persons charged with the exercise of powers properly belonging to one of these departments shall exercise any functions, appertaining to either of the others, except in the cases expressly directed or permitted in this constitution.”

Despite the restriction, public employees representing both major parties routinely serve in Carson City without consequence.

In 2004, Brian Sandoval, then the state’s attorney general, offered a legal interpretation which held that the law allowed local government workers to sit as state lawmakers, but prohibited state government employees from doing so. Still, those comfortably ensconced in the state political establishment continued to cover their eyes. But that may soon change. Earlier this week, the Nevada Policy Research Institute filed suit challenging the right of state Sen. Heidi Gansert, a Reno Republican, to hold her seat. Ms. Gansert moonlights in the executive branch as the executive director of external relations for UNR.

The issue goes much deeper than routine conflict-ofinterest concerns. The nation’s founders embedded the separation of powers concept within the U.S. Constitution as a vital safeguard against the consolidation and abuse of authority. “The accumulation of powers … in the same hands,” observed James Madison in The Federalist Papers, No. 47, “whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

There should be no doubt about the merits of the NPRI lawsuit. The clear language of the state constitution must eclipse the convenience of entrenched political interests.