Shouldn’t superintendents be subject to ethics-in-government laws?
All across America, elected officials are required to file personal financial disclosure reports and ethics-acknowledgment statements. Both are intended to promote public integrity.
The financial disclosure reports, usually annual, remind officials of their financial interests and help them avoid conflicts of interest. The ethics-acknowledgment statements — forms stating he or she has read and understands the state’s ethics standards and recognizes his or her obligation to keep abreast of any new amendments — are intended to also discourage ethical violations.
Thus, it would probably come as no surprise to learn that Nevada law, too, requires such filings for every elected official in the state.
Moreover, since many powerful public officers are appointed, not elected, to office, it would probably also come as no surprise to learn that Nevada’s ethics laws also require appointed public officers to file these same documents with the ethics commission. Examples of appointed public officers are Clark County Manager Virginia Valentine, Henderson City Manager Mark Calhoun and Las Vegas City Manager Betsy Fretwell.
So, then, would it now come as a surprise to learn that Clark County School District Superintendent Walt Rulffes — who oversees an empire of employees over twice that of Valentine, Calhoun and Fretwell combined — has never filed an ethics acknowledgement or financial disclosure during his entire five-year tenure as superintendent?
In fact, no CCSD superintendent has, and the state ethics commission doesn’t know whether they should.