Opinion ID: 2609783
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Contract Forfeiture: Does the Ethics Commission Have the Statutory Power to Deprive the State and Lucchesi of Their Contractual Rights?

Text: The answer to the captioned question is that the Ethics Commission has no power to declare a contract to be illegal or invalid. It is indeed strange that this court would invest the Commission with such powers not granted to it by the legislature. This advisory, executive commission has taken it upon itself to issue an Opinion declaring that Lucchesi has violated NRS 281.481(3) and, hence, that he is precluded from going ahead with the performance of his contract with the State. The trial court, naturally, ruled against the Ethics Commission and said, in effect, to the Ethics Commission: You have the statutory power to give advisory, non-punitive `opinions' relating to the ethical conduct of state employees, but you do not have the power to invalidate a legal contract nor do you have the power to declare that anyone has violated the law, much less the power to declare that a state employee is precluded from going forward with an existing state contract. Legal questions as to the enforceability of this contract are not a matter of ethics but of law, and are to be decided by the court. The Ethics Commission intervened in this case at the request of Lucchesi himself, because Lucchesi wanted to be vindicated morally. I doubt that he would have made this request if he had dreamt that the Commission was going to declare his contract legally ineffective; but, of course, Lucchesi had no reason to believe that the Ethics Commission would attempt to do anything more than issue an advisory ethical opinion as provided for in the Ethics in Government Law. NRS 281.511 empowers the Ethics Commission to render an opinion relating only to statutory ethical standards. (Emphasis added.) [2] The Ethics Commission did rule correctly in the present case that Lucchesi was guilty of no willful wrongdoing, that is, guilty of no ethical breach. Unfortunately, the Commission did not stop with its ethics decision but, rather, went on to express its legal opinion, namely that NRS 281.481(3) precludes Mr. Lucchesi and Mr. Carr, as state employees, from contracting with the State of Nevada through its agency, the University of Nevada Systems, for architectural services. (Emphasis added). The effect of this declaration is entirely legal in import and has nothing to do with the ethical standards that the Commission is supposed to be attending to. By definition, an ethics commission deals with ethical questions, not legal questions. This Commission is entitled to make judgments relating to ethical standards. NRS 281.511(1). It is not empowered to decide questions of law. Ethics is the science of moral duty. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (5th ed. 1943). The Ethics Commission may render advisory opinions on the moral quality of given conduct, that is to say, whether the conduct is right or wrong. The Commission in this case, sometimes using the word innocent, declared that Lucchesi, in his dealings with the State, had done nothing wrong. Still, going far beyond the rendering of an ethics opinion, the Ethics Commission declared that Lucchesi's conduct was in violation of law, and adjudicated his ineligibility to proceed with the awarded contract. This decision goes far beyond the authority given to the Ethics Commission by the statute and is an intrusion upon the powers of the judicial branch of government.