In an unsurprising development, Joe Lombardo is bringing his shadiness and lack of transparency to the governor’s mansion. New reporting reveals Lombardo bucked bipartisan precedent and registered his inaugural committee as a dark money group, allowing him to hide who has given him money and how that money is being spent. Coming to light as he’s vetoing and signing critical legislation, Lombardo is keeping Nevadans in the dark about possible special interest groups hoping to curry favor with a newly elected governor.
Read more below about Lombardo’s shady ways below.
Riley Snyder
May 26, 2023
Key Points:
- Like his predecessors, one of the first things Joe Lombardo did after winning the election for governor was start planning for inaugural balls. But unlike his predecessors, Lombardo created a nonprofit organization — “Nevada Inaugural Committee” — to run the events, rather than register a political action committee (PAC) to do the job.
- Lombardo’s use of a nonprofit to manage his inaugural ball marks a departure from past practice, and allows him to avoid disclosing donors.
- Bradley Schrager, an attorney who frequently represents Democrats and Democrat-backed causes, suggested that the creation of a nonprofit organization to run the inaugural committee was an effort to avoid transparency.
- “Raising hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for your inaugural [committee] but refusing to disclose is a novel and arrogant way of cheating the public out of its right to know who’s funding its elected officials,” Schrager said. “Lombardo’s predecessors, both Republican and Democrat, reported every dime they raised for this purpose.”
- Past governors, including [Steve] Sisolak and Brian Sandoval, registered their inaugural committees with the secretary of state’s office as PACs. That structure allowed each inaugural committee organization to accept unlimited campaign contributions, but required them to publicly report all contributions and expenditures.
Read the full story here.
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