120-day deadline on Legislature curbs bill drafts

Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2001 | 9:29 a.m.

Legislators and state and local agencies had requested 1,098 measures for drafting through Dec. 15, the cutoff date for requests. That's down almost 20 percent from 1,364 at the same time two years ago.

"The smaller number of bills should be very helpful in meeting our deadlines," said Lorne Malkiewich, director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau.

This session is complicated by reapportionment, the politically contentious issue of redrawing political boundaries for the lawmakers themselves and - for the first time - three members of Congress.

Malkiewich estimates that the total number of bills and resolutions requested for drafting will reach about 1,500. The 1999 session saw 1,784 measures drafted. In 1997 it was 1,858.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, said the smaller number of bills is welcome news.

"It lends itself to us being able to get our work done in a more timely fashion," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Perkins said reapportionment will be one of a number of complex measures lawmakers will have to dispatch in 120 days. Gov. Kenny Guinn's proposed budget and electrical utility restructuring also will be time-intensive issues, he said.

The 1,098 bills requested for drafting for 2001 run the gamut from a proposal by Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, to abolish the death penalty to a measure from Assemblywoman Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, to ban surreptitious videotaping, or "video voyeurism."

Other measures are less weighty.

Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, has requested a bill to create a special license plate to support rodeos in Nevada. Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, wants to designate an official state tartan.

State senators were limited to 20 requests while members of the Assembly could request 10 measures.