How Much Do You Know About Candidates' Finances?

By Dana Gentry, Nevada Current

March 30, 2022

Aside from his $192,000 salary as Clark County Sheriff, and his spouse’s income as a commercial real estate broker, gubernatorial hopeful Joe Lombardo and wife Donna Alderson make their money from “investments,” according to Lombardo’s financial disclosure statement.

Under state law, voters have no right to know what those investments are.

Nevada law requires public officials and candidates file a financial disclosure statement (FDS) each year, a form intended to lend transparency by notifying the public of potential conflicts of interest. They are not required to list the amounts derived from investments or income, with the exception of their public salary.

But with little required from candidates and officials in the way of specificity, and even less scrutiny paid from the supposed watchdog of all things election-related, the Secretary of State, the disclosures prove largely inconsequential.

FDS must be filed by:

• All candidates seeking public office who are entitled to receive $6,000 or more annually
• All candidates for the office of state legislator
• All incumbents regardless of salary

Sometimes candidates ignore the requirement.

Dean Heller, a former Secretary of State himself, missed Monday’s deadline to file an FDS as a gubernatorial hopeful. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Lombardo, Clark County’s top law enforcement officer, married Alderson in 2015 but failed to include her employment as a source of household income on his 2016, 2017 and 2018 statements.

“Donna has completed over 1,400 transactions valued in excess of $2.4 billion including the sale of over 1,800 acres of land and over 48 million square feet of building transactions,” said the website of Alderson’s employer at the time, CBRE.

In 2019, the Current reported Lombardo failed to file a financial disclosure by the January 15 deadline. Failure to file is punishable by civil penalties under NRS 281.581. Lombardo would have owed a minimum $2,000, had he been fined.

But the Secretary of State’s office hasn’t fined a public official in recent memory, then-Deputy Secretary for Elections Wayne Thorley said at the time.

“It happens very rarely. I can’t think of one. And it has to be a willful violation – intentional and knowingly — and that’s not always readily available,” Thorley said in 2019.

The man Lombardo hopes to face in November, Gov. Steve Sisolak, filed a relatively detailed FDS that includes a dozen sources of income for Sisolak and his wife, Kathy, as well as real estate investments held by the first lady in Nevada and Utah.

State law requires candidates and officials list any real estate, other than their personal residence, located in Nevada or an adjacent state, in which they or a household member have a beneficial interest of at least $2,500.

“These are elected officials or appointed officials who exercise a fair amount of authority in government and the disclosure forms are there to make the public aware of any potential conflicts of interest — whether it’s through the giving of gifts or through affiliation with an entity, “ Thorley said in 2019. “They (financial disclosures) provide the public with information if the public officer is not acting in the interest of the government they represent.”

Sisolak’s FDS also discloses trusts in which his wife has an interest, but not their contents. Nevada law makes no mention of trusts in relation to campaign disclosure, and even if it did, “we don’t have the resources” to investigate, says current election deputy Mark Wlaschin.

Former Gov. Kenny Guinn, a prolific investor in real estate trust deeds, formed a blind trust upon taking office in 1999, which he used to avoid disclosing a beneficial interest in more than 300 loans (many of them to campaign contributors) brokered by his son, Jeff, during Guinn’s eight years in office. After Guinn’s death in 2010, his son Steve revealed in litigation that his father was fully aware of transactions involving his “blind trust.”

In 2012, a lawsuit filed by Henderson pioneer Selma Bartlett against former Mayor Jim Gibson over unpaid personal loans totalling $750,000, revealed that Gibson failed to disclose the loans on his FDS since he began borrowing from Bartlett in 2004. Gibson, now a Clark County Commissioner, told the Las Vegas Sun at the time that disclosure was not required because the loans were “secured by real property.”

The FDS has no exemption for loans secured by real property with the exception of a personal residence. Gibson noted at the time his residence had been used as collateral for another loan.

No scrutiny

Does anyone in the Secretary of State’s office look at FDS to ensure they are accurately completed?

“As it currently stands, we do not. You’re probably looking at more than even just one full time compliance auditor,” Wlaschin said in an interview, adding that augmenting staff would take a budget request to the 2023 Legislature. “That would be a couple people to go through and scrub those sorts of records. There’s a lot of changes and a lot of discussion that have to happen before that could occur.”

“Unfortunately, a lot of law makers who are the ones designing the laws that are there to oversee their activity do enjoy keeping the offices underfunded, because that ensures a lack of oversight over their activity,” says Beth Rotman of Common Cause, a watchdog organization based in Washington, D.C. “To have absolutely no one looking is, I would say, atypical. It’s more typical to have a very lean staff.”

Candidates and officials are required to list business entities “with which you or a member of your household is involved as a trustee, beneficiary of a trust, director, officer, owner in whole or in part, limited or general partner, or holder of a class of stock or security representing 1% or more of the total outstanding stock or securities issued by the business entity.”

Henderson City Councilman Dan Shaw’s FDS lists two companies in which he has an interest. Shaw is also listed on the Secretary of State’s corporate filings as the manager of Nevada Impact Management LLC, which is listed as the manager of dozens of companies, including a call center in Utah and 17 payday lending companies throughout the U.S. Shaw is also listed as president and director of a Utah insurance company. His wife is also a director.

A manager is considered an officer, according to Wlaschin.

None of those entities are disclosed by Shaw on his FDS. He declined to comment.

“We rely on the public checking on everybody,” says Jennifer Russell, spokeswoman for the Secretary of State. “Elected officials kind of check on each other and they will report to us if there’s something that we need to look into to file a complaint. We focus our attention on trying to get to the bottom of whatever the issue is.”

“We’re all big fans of transparency across the board,“ says Wlaschin. Financial transparency, he says, is no exception. “Are there ways that we could improve? Certainly.”

Note: Dana Gentry authored a book about former Gov. Guinn’s blind trust.

Nevada Current, a nonprofit, online source of political news and commentary, documents the policies, institutions and systems that affect Nevadans’ daily lives. The Current is part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers.