Lawmakers dish the dirt during parade of requests

Erin Neff

Friday, March 9, 2001 | 12:05 p.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Legislature on Thursday put aside some weightier issues and turned to some earthy discussion and fanfare.

While the Senate was getting down in the dirt, the Assembly ribbed one of its own about his sponsorship of a bill to designate an official state march.

"This does not replace 'Home Means Nevada,' the official state song," Greg Brower said in defending his sponsorship of a measure to make "Silver State Fanfare" the official state march.

In the Senate, Dean Rhoads, R-Tuscarora, rushed a vote on Senate Bill 152 to the floor in an emergency measure because students from the Orovada School, who supported naming a state soil, were in the gallery that morning.

Now the Orovada series, classified as "coarse-loamy, mixed, superactive mesic Durinodic Xeric Haplocambids," is one step closer to being named the official state soil of Nevada.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture representative in Reno said he has routinely distributed samples of the Orovada soil since 1975.

"It's one of the many soils that does support the sagebrush, which is the state flower," said Bill Dollarhide, the USDA's soil scientist in Nevada.

Fifteen other states have an official soil.

Although the unanimous passage by the Senate would indicate similar support in the Assembly, the 1999 session proved otherwise for "Silver State Fanfare."

Brower, R-Reno, said that despite unanimous Assembly support for the fanfare in 1999, the measure died in the Senate.

The march, composed by Gerald Willis and performed by Reno-area high school students during the 1997 presidential inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., was played recently during a committee hearing.

But when Assemblyman David Goldwater, D-Las Vegas, asked Brower to offer a rendition of the march, Brower balked, citing his lack of marching-band backup.

For the next eight minutes Assembly members clamored for Brower to hum a few bars and finally threatened that Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, could subpoena Brower to perform the march during karaoke at a local bar.

"Did you expect this much fanfare when you sponsored this?" asked Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas.

Both the march and soil measures passed the individual houses unanimously. If more official behavior follows, the remainder of the session Nevada could soon have another official animal and new license plates commemorating rodeos and the Nevada Test Site. One bill would designate the mustang as the official state animal, along with the desert bighorn sheep.

Nevada also has two official trees, the single-leaf pinon and the bristlecone pine. But the Silver State has only one official bird, the mountain bluebird, and one reptile, the desert tortoise.

Sometimes an official designation has two entries to represent both the northern and southern parts of the state. Since Orovada soils are extensive on more than 360,000 acres in Northern Nevada, it might be inevitable for future Legislatures to consider a southern variety.