Tonight if you see your state senator and a lobbyist dining on Châteaubriand and drinking red wine in a fine Las Vegas restaurant, it’s a safe bet they aren’t going Dutch treat. The lobbyist will pick up the tab and no one ever will know he did.
With much fanfare in April, legislative leaders called for approval of a plan to make government more transparent to Nevadans. A few weeks later, the Senate unanimously passed a bill to require lobbyists to report their year-round expenditures on legislators.
But the Legislature adjourned without taking final action on that transparency bill. An Assembly committee let it die without a vote. Not taking a vote on a bill is an old technique to keep the voters in the dark when their legislators oppose bills popular with the public.
