Reapportionment means more federal representation

Monday, Dec. 27, 1999 | 3:17 a.m.

The census numbers must be applied to representative government at every level, in line with the U.S. Constitution's "one man, one vote" mandate.

The 2001 Nevada Legislature will draw the lines for its own districts and also for university regents, the state Board of Education and the state's seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Counties and cities draw districts for their own commission and council seats.

When the 2000 Census numbers are in, everyone expects Nevada - the nation's fastest growing state - will get a third seat in the House. And Clark County, encompassing Las Vegas, will have a veto-proof two-thirds majority of the state Legislature.

It took Nevada from statehood in 1864 until the 1980 Census to qualify for a second seat in the House. But according to Bob Erickson, head of the Legislative Counsel Bureau Research Division, Nevada should already have the population needed to qualify for that third congressional seat.

Representation in Congress is determined by dividing the U.S. population by 435 - an estimated 275 million by next April. That equates to one representative for every 632,000 people.

Nevada already has more than the 1.9 million residents needed to qualify for a third seat.

While exact population figures won't aren't available until the census count next April, about 1.3 million live in Clark County. That means Rep. Jim Gibbons's seat will probably look very much the same after reapportionment - all of Nevada outside of Clark County. The other two members of Congress will probably be elected in the Las Vegas area.

The other way to divide up the districts would split the north and rural areas between seats that all reach into the Las Vegas area, which could give Las Vegas voters control of all three seats.

Most of the work will involve redrawing lines for legislative districts. Most agree the big fights may center on how to draw lines within the Las Vegas area where huge growth has expanded the perimeter of the metropolitan area.

The population of some outlying districts has quadrupled, while older districts landlocked within the city have changed only slightly.

Erickson said the other key issue lawmakers must resolve in 2001 is how to handle the dwindling percentage of rural Nevadans. At present, there are two rural senators, Dean Rhoads and Mike McGinness, and four Assembly members, John Marvel, John Carpenter, Marcia de Braga and Roy Neighbors.

They represent more nearly 75 percent of the land area and a dozen of the state's 17 counties.

McGinness's district, according to Erickson, contains more square miles than any other state legislative district in the nation outside of Alaska. It stretches from Fallon to Ely and south to Clark County covering all of six counties and pieces of two more. Rhoads's district - from Washoe County to the Utah border across northern Nevada, may be second largest in the continental U.S.

The choice facing lawmakers is whether to make those districts even larger, cutting rural representation, or to expand the size of the Legislature.

"If they went to 75, they could keep existing rural seats," he said. There are now 63 members, 21 senators and 42 Assembly members. All four new Senate seats and eight new Assembly seats would go to Clark County.