Editorial: Partisan attack on Berkley off target

Sunday, July 2, 2000 | 10:44 a.m.

Republican House candidate Jon Porter looks foolish when he claims that Rep. Shelley Berkley is soft on nuclear waste storage in Nevada. Porter, who hopes to unseat the Democratic incumbent, is criticizing her vote in favor of a $22 billion appropriations bill that pays for energy and water projects nationwide.

Porter claims that since the bill also contains $413 million in funding to continue work on Yucca Mountain, Berkley should have voted against the bill as did Nevada's other House member, Republican Jim Gibbons. But the bill isn't a straight up-or-down vote on nuclear waste storage. For that matter, the bill contains critical funding for flood control projects in Southern Nevada.

Nevada's two U.S. senators, Democrats Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, plan to vote in favor of the bill -- and no one says they're caving in. Indeed, the bill will provide Nevada with $2.5 million to oversee federal work at Yucca Mountain, a provision a Republican, Gov. Kenny Guinn, fought to obtain. Gibbons and Porter would do better to spend their time trying to change the minds of Republican House leaders, who want to turn Nevada into the nation's nuclear waste dumping ground.