LAS VEGAS -- Were she not so disliked, Controller
Kathy Augustine's status as the first state official in Nevada
ever to be considered for impeachment would be a run-of-the-mill
political scandal.
After all, the Republican's misdeeds -- she's admitted to
a state ethics panel that a member of her staff wrote political
speeches and worked the phones for fund-raising on state time
-- are hardly the stuff of great spectacle in this town of great
spectacle.
Yet Augustine, 48, whose impeachment proceedings begin today
in a special session of the Nevada Legislature, is such a divisive
figure that her downfall is occurring at the hands of fellow
Republicans: the attorney general who investigated her and a
GOP-dominated state Senate, which probably will have to decide
whether to toss her from office. And Governor Kenny Guinn, US
Senator John Ensign, and US Representative Jim Gibbons -- all
Republicans -- have called on her to quit to spare the state
weeks of $15,000-a-day proceedings to fund the special session.
Instead, the second-term controller vows to defend herself,
and her lawyer, Dominic Gentile, is warning that lawmakers who
impeach Augustine do so at their peril.
"The Assembly and Senate are really trying themselves here,"
Gentile said. "Some of them have aspirations for higher political
office. All of them have people who work for them who work on
their campaigns.
"If they want to make a sacrificial lamb out of her, fine,
but every one of them has disgruntled employees and every one
of them will face ethics complaints filed by them if they find
that this is . . . worthy of being expelled from office," he
said. State Senator Dina Titus, the Democratic minority leader,
scoffed at this suggestion. She said the Legislature meets for
only 120 days every other year, so only a few lawmakers have
full-time staff.
"If [Augustine] wants to drag other people through the mud,
I suggest they let her do that, because it won't be me or anyone
I know," Titus said.
Augustine finds herself in this predicament after she admitted
in September to three counts of "willful" violations of ethics
laws and agreed to pay a $15,000 fine. Under Nevada law, such
violations trigger a requirement that the Assembly consider
whether to draw up articles of impeachment to send to the Senate
for a verdict.
Gentile said Augustine won't comment on the proceedings until
she is called to testify.
In an Oct. 10 letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Augustine
said, "I will not stand silently and have my integrity dragged
through the mud," and she "always believed in maintaining the
public trust." She also said she instructed her staff not to
do campaign work on state time.
Gentile said Augustine stipulated only that she should have
known that former executive assistant Jennifer Normington did
campaign work for her on state time, not that she directed Normington
to do so. But testimony from Normington and former assistant
controller Jeannine Coward, who said she did such work on state
time, indicated Augustine demanded they do it and created a
fearful environment.
"She's a screamer and a yeller and a pounder on the desk,
and you know you tried to avoid any unpleasant situations with
her," Coward testified to state ethics investigators.
Gentile faces an audience soured by Augustine's decades of
strange behavior. Democrats, who rule the Assembly where the
articles of impeachment may be drawn up, have a litany of scores
to settle.
Titus and other critics recall that Augustine was first elected
to the Assembly in 1992 by unseating a black incumbent after
sending out a mailer showing Augustine, a white blonde, alongside
a grainy photo of her black opponent with the headline: "There
is a difference."
Two years later, Augustine ascended to the Senate by unseating
a Jewish lawmaker who she contended had refused to pray and
say the Pledge of Allegiance. The incumbent abstained from the
prayer to protest the fact that it was always led by a Christian
minister, and, several witnesses said, she always recited the
pledge.
Normington also testified that Augustine suggested she kill
her diabetic cat because caring for the pet was distracting
Normington from her work.
"That was enough for me, 'cause I got a cat," Titus said.
"A lot of people who don't like Kathy Augustine think if this
is gonna happen, it couldn't happen to a less nice person."
Gentile insisted Augustine has been tarred by vindictive civil
servants. The suggestion about Normington's cat, he said, was
offered out of compassion for the ailing animal.
The controller has also alienated several Republicans. Guinn
had been a longtime political ally, but he was offended last
month when he asked Augustine, after her ethics violations were
announced, to meet with him in private. She refused unless her
lawyer could be present. And this week she asked for a special
independent prosecutor for her impeachment proceedings because
she contended that the attorney general is biased.
Gentile expects lawmakers to weigh the evidence and conclude
that Augustine deserves a censure, not impeachment. Because
the state's never impeached anyone, he said, these proceedings
will set the bar for what infractions qualify for removal.
"I don't expect anybody to embrace Kathy Augustine and say,
'Hey, Kathy, what you did here was good,' " Gentile said. "But
they should say 'Hey Kathy, the fact that you admitted you should
have known about this is good.'
"This is not the stuff you remove people from office for;
it's what we fine them for. If [lawmakers] approach it with
an open mind, Kathy Augustine wins."
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