Friday, April 3, 1998 | 10:01 a.m.
The ring is not the thing, says Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone about his proposal for better managing growth in the Las Vegas Valley by overseeing federal land exchanges.
Malone is upset that his proposal to create a panel to review federal land exchanges has been linked to the ring-around-the-valley proposal of Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, which failed at the 1997 Legislature.
"This is not a Malone-Titus proposal," Malone said. "I don't even need her."
Malone also said he doesn't want people to confuse the ring with an existing federal boundary that has existed for years to mark off the millions of acres the Bureau of Land Management has promised not to sell for the next 25 years.
"There is no ring," Malone said.
Malone said he talked to Titus to gain her support after he had already secured the backing of local mayors. Malone also wanted to get her to drop her growth boundary, which would have restricted development of private land outside a designated boundary.
"The whole purpose for allowing her to view this concept is because we have to work together," Malone said.
Titus said her ring and the federal boundary are one and the same, and now that the ring is in place, she can focus on legislation to "make life inside the ring what we want it to be."
Titus said the only difference between her legislation and Malone's proposal is that his focuses on restricting land exchanges outside the ring instead of restricting development.
"It does very little," Titus said. "It's just a way to have some input into the BLM decision-making process through an advisory mechanism, and makes all the land swap proposals public. I think that's a big plus."
Local oversight is also the heart of federal legislation sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. and Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev.
"Why wait for federal legislation when we have the opportunity to do something locally now," Malone said.
The Las Vegas Valley Land Exchange Commission would concern itself only with the the 30,000 acres of federal land up for grabs inside the BLM's existing disposal boundary.
The advisory panel would be made up of local mayors, the county commission chairman and and vice-chairman and the BLM's regional bureau manager to review any proposed land exchanges.
The commission would meet twice a year to make recommendations to ensure that no exchange occurs where no local infrastructure exists, Malone said. The BLM manager can then take that recommendation to his superiors to use in their decision-making.
It also would let stand the status quo on the 2,037 small landholders outside the disposal boundary, who currently can develop their property with the appropriate zoning and land-use approvals.
While Malone has the backing of the BLM and the local mayors, getting his fellow county commissioners to support his plan has proved more difficult.
The County Commission rejected Malone's idea when he brought it up during a January growth workshop at McCarran International Airport. Commissioners then felt that creating another commission would be adding one too many layers of bureaucracy.
Commissioners would rather see that oversight function rolled into the board's plan to reconfigure the existing Government Efficiency Committee as the Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition.
That proposal will be considered by the commission April 16.
Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said he thinks Malone's proposal makes sense as far as local governments having more input on the land exchange process, but that a separate committee does not need to be created.
"I think it could be a workable compromise," Woodbury said. "It would be more local government oversight of these exchanges, so they don't occur where we don't want development to occur so soon."
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