Nevadans in Congress list their assets, liabilities

Horsford has Facebook stock; Heck owes on student loans; Titus invests in power companies

Rep. Steven Horsford and his wife, Sonya, bought stock in Facebook on the day the company went public. Rep. Joe Heck and his wife, Lisa, opened a college savings account for their son Joey Jr. Rep. Dina Titus and her husband, Tom, like to invest in electricity companies.

Those details and others can be found in the latest financial disclosure reports that members of Congress are required to file each year. Reports covering 2012 became available last week.

The documents draw a general picture of lawmakers’ financial standings, listing what investments they own and what liabilities they hold, including their mortgages. They are not precise: Values are reported in broad ranges.

The reports also do not list the lawmakers’ annual salaries, which are $174,000.

Here are thumbnails of House members from Southern Nevada:

Horsford, a Democrat elected in November, and his wife, who is an education leadership expert, hold investments in stocks and stock funds valued at between $27,000 and $230,000.

Before leaving for Washington, Horsford, 40, collected $190,840 in his final year salary and severance as chief executive of the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, according to the report.

When Facebook went public on May 18, 2012, the Horsfords bought between $1,000 and $15,000 in stock.

Horsford plans to file an amendment reflecting the couple holds a $389,000 mortgage on their home in Las Vegas, a spokesman said. A rental time share in Newport, Calif., is valued at $25,000.

Heck, a Republican in his second term, and his wife, who is a nurse, hold bank accounts of between $15,000 and $50,000, and annuities and retirement accounts containing between $199,000 and $561,000. than the 28 measures he rejected in the 2011 session.

Democrats have controlled both houses of the Legislature during the Republican governor’s first term in office.

Sandoval’s vetoes pale in comparison to the record set by former Gov. Jim Gibbons in the 2009 legislative session.

Gibbons vetoed 48 bills from that session, but 25 of the measures were approved anyway when the Legislature overrode his vetoes with two-thirds votes in both the state Senate and Assembly.

According to an article by former State Archivist Guy Rocha, Gibbons beat out Gov. Henry Blasdel, who vetoed 38 bills and saw 11 veto overrides in Nevada’s first state legislative session in 1864-65.

No Sandoval veto has been overridden yet by the Legislature.

Sandoval’s most controversial veto from the 2013 session was the universal gun background check measure, Senate Bill 221.

In his veto message, Sandoval said the provision of the bill pertaining to background checks for the private sale and transfer of firearms constitutes “an erosion of Nevadans’ Second Amendment rights under the United States Constitution and may subject otherwise law-abiding citizens to criminal prosecution.”

Another controversial veto was Senate Bill 457, which would have allowed voting by wards for council members in Henderson, Reno, Sparks and Carson City. In his veto message, Sandoval noted Reno voters overwhelming rejected ward voting and that Henderson and the other cities opposed it, too.

— Sean Whaley