Panel Delays Approval of DMV’s Expansion

Thursday, March 21, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

"We were trying to do them a favor, to give them a nice building. Now they want to come in and renovate. Why don't they make up their minds?" Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, said.

The 1995 Legislature approved $2.5 million for a new, 15,000-square-foot DMV building near the current headquarters. But since then, there have been concerns about a high water table and swamp-like conditions at the building site.

Eric Raecke, head of the state Public Works Board, told the Interim Finance Committee, co-chaired by Arberry, that DMV officials also have said they'd like to keep all operations under one roof.

Raecke proposed three options to the IFC at its meeting Wednesday: the original full-service building, a computer building and remodeled existing building, and a new building in a parking lot to the north.

But lawmakers said that what the 1995 Legislature approved was substantially different from what was on the table Wednesday, and it might be beyond IFC authority to approve such changes.

The committee will take another look at the issue at its next meeting in May, after getting a report on the options.