Dini blasts Guinn administration’s dismantling of water agency

Monday, Sept. 4, 2000 | 9:44 a.m.

The Yerington Democrat said the move by Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn to eliminate Naomi Duerr and her agency is a bad one for the nation's driest and fastest-growing state.

Dini, a strong supporter of state water planning, said he's growing tired of having the agency eliminated every time money gets tight.

Water planning has been eliminated twice in the last 20 years, and Dini fought both times to get it reinstated.

"I may be running out of time," the 71-year-old Dini told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "Term limits might get me."

Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said she's unhappy the governor decided to ax the division without input from the public or legislators. The current fiscal year doesn't end until next July, she noted.

"This isn't how things are supposed to work. We have a legislative process," said Leslie, who sits on the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

"This is a debate we should be having in the budget committee in February. This should not be unilaterally decided in September. Where's the crisis?"

Representatives of various environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Citizen Alert, Trout Unlimited and Great Basin Mine Watch, also denounced the move at a news conference Friday in Reno.

But Scott Scherer, the governor's chief of staff, defended the move as a way to save money and streamline state government.

There's no reason to keep Duerr or her agency around because she and her staff have completed the state's new 20-year water plan, he said.

Duerr presented the plan to the Legislature last year and was just getting started carrying out some of its 72 recommendations.

Duerr's boss, Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Director Mike Turnipseed, estimates the move will free up $500,000 a year.

Much of the work done by Duerr's office will continue, but in state agencies other than her division, Scherer said.

"(The outcry from environmentalists) shows why it's so difficult to make government efficient when you have even common-sense ideas bringing all the special interest groups out of the woodwork," Scherer said.

But Leslie complained the move may be penny-wise and pound foolish, noting Duerr supplemented her $650,000 a year general fund budget with $1.3 million in federal grants the last five years.

About $500,000 of that grant money went to local goverments for flood control projects. It's unlikely the state would be able to get that money in the future, Leslie said.

"There went our cost savings," she said.

Scherer said there would be an opportunity for public input during the Legislature's budget hearings next year.

But Dini said it's unlikely the program could be reinstated once the governor builds a new budget without it.

Legislators would have to chop other programs to come up with money to fund the division for two years, he said.

Tina Nappe, who sits on the 15-member Advisory Board on Water Resources Planning and Developing, said the elimination of Duerr and her division would lead to less public participation in state water planning efforts.

The advisory board also will be eliminated, she said.