Legislature won’t rush to redraw boundaries

Monday, March 12, 2001 | 11:40 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The census breakdown for Nevada is scheduled to be released this week, but don't expect any quick action by the Legislature on reapportionment.

"It will probably be the very last thing the Legislature does," Sen. Ann O'Connell, R-Las Vegas, said. O'Connell's government affairs committee will process the reapportionment plans.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, agreed. "I don't anticipate any reapportionment bill passing both houses until the end of the session," which comes June 4.

The information to be released by the U.S. Census Bureau is a detailed analysis of where the population resides and is broken down into city blocks and smaller units.

When made public, it will be fed into computers in the Legislature. Lorne Malkiewich, director of the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau, said it should take a day or two to load the computers with the data, and "then they can start drafting maps."

Computer rooms are assigned to the Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, Assembly Democrats and Assembly Republicans. Each will have someone experienced in geographic information systems assigned to them.

In a new wrinkle, public work stations loaded with the software and census data will be set up in the legislative building in Carson City and the Sawyer State Office Building in Las Vegas. They will allow residents to draw up their own proposed districts.

"Any person who wants to could set up a plan for Clark or Washoe counties or for other areas" Malkiewich said, then send it to a legislator.

The Legislature has the duty to revamp itself according to population. It will draw the lines for the three congressional districts and decide on reapportionment plans for the state Board of Education and the Board of Regents of the University and Community College System of Nevada.

With the influx of population to Southern Nevada, Clark County will gain more seats in both the Senate and Assembly. It is expected to have enough votes -- two-thirds of the membership -- to override any veto by a governor.

Clark now has 13 of the 21 members in the Senate and 26 of the 42 seats in the Assembly.

One of the first decisions that must be made is whether to expand the Legislature to allow rural Nevada to retain its present numbers.

Rural lawmakers want to enlarge the Legislature to allow them to retain similar districts, but many in Clark County oppose adding new members. If the Legislature is not enlarged, rural counties would lose 1 1/2 Senate seats and three Assembly positions to Clark County.

Perkins opposes expansion "until somebody can prove otherwise and nobody has taken the effort to do that yet. All they (rural lawmakers) have said anecdotally is that they need more seats to protect the rurals."

"Somebody needs to show me why that's the case." He predicted controversy over the various plans.

"I don't know of any way we can keep the same numbers and protect the rurals," O'Connell said. "When we look at issues like this, we have to think about the whole system.

'If we're ever going to develop the center part of our state, which is so important to our economy, then we do need to have their voices heard," she said.

The two senate districts represented by Republicans Dean Rhoads of Tuscarora and Mike McGinness of Fallon may have enough population now to keep their districts whole.

She estimated each has a population of about 86,000.

The Nevada Constitution limits the number of lawmakers to 75. There are 63.

Besides their own fights to save their seats and to give their party a leg up in the 2002 election, lawmakers will decide on boundary lines for the congressional districts. Nevada gained a seat in the 2000 Census.

Rep. James Gibbons, R-Reno, wants each of the three districts to have a piece of Las Vegas. This way, he argues, the congress members would have to know the problems of both rural and urban Nevada. But Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas, said she wants to retain her district in Southern Nevada, a district populated mainly by urban Democrats.

Nevada's population grew from 1,201,833 in 1990 to 1,998,257 in 2000, a gain of 66.3 percent. Bob Erickson, chief of research for the Nevada Legislature, estimates that Clark County will have 68.7 percent of the new population count, up from 61.7 percent in 1990.

The present Senate districts were based on a population of 57,200 apiece and the Assembly on 28,600 people each. If the numbers remain the same in the Senate and Assembly, a senator would present 95,155 people and an assembly member 47,578.

Erickson said some Assembly districts have exploded in population since the 1990 Census. For instance, Erickson estimates that Assemblyman Dennis Nolan in District 13 in Las Vegas has 135,000 residents; Kathy Von Tobel in District 20 in Las Vegas has about 114,000; David Brown in District 22 in Henderson has 110,000; and Bob Beers in District 4 in Las Vegas, 105,000.

Those areas will have to be reduced. Still, he said, there are a number of districts in Clark County that have not shown much growth and are in the 30,000 range.

Statewide, he said, 21 of the 42 Assembly districts have fewer than 40,000 people, meaning they would have to be expanded if the Legislature is not enlarged.