Reapportionment debate goes down to wire

Erin Neff

Wednesday, May 30, 2001 | 11:11 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Fewer than six days remain for legislators to resolve numerous issues, including the political game of reapportionment that could hold all other measures hostage.

Lawmakers have until midnight Monday. If they push business up to that deadline, that means less time to pass legislation that will have to be reprinted or reconsidered in the other house before the official "sine die" -- adjournment.

So if you work backward from Monday at midnight, most action will have to occur by Saturday to allow enough time for the procedural steps.

As of today no legislators were certain how to bridge the chasm separating Democrats and Republicans on reapportionment.

Sen. Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said he will not waver on the Republican plan to expand the Legislature to 69 seats. In a meeting with legislative leaders last week, Raggio asked Democrats to allow the expansion in order to start the negotiations on districts.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, would not agree to the expansion during that meeting and said on Tuesday night that he has not changed his mind. The Democrats' plan is based on the current 63-seat Legislature.

Without deciding the size of the Legislature, legislators cannot begin to reach consensus on any of the proposed Senate and Assembly districts in either plan.

Perkins said Tuesday he does not consider the size of the Legislature a deal breaker, but he stopped short of saying he would agree to increase the size of the body.

"It's all on the table," Perkins said.

Here's what else is still on the table:

* Assembly Democrats get their first crack at a business fee plan trotted out last week by Gov. Kenny Guinn and Sen. Mark James, R-Las Vegas. The plan aims to raise $29 million from the business franchise fees and $26 million from recapturing rental car taxes over the course of the next two years.

The money, coupled with $57.5 million in Guinn's budget, is proposed to fund a 3 percent bonus for teachers this year and a 2 percent raise next year.

But this morning when the business fee bill faced a hearing in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, Democrats were expected to balk at a provision giving corporate boards of directors personal immunity from company decisions.

If the liability provision is removed, Raggio and the Republicans have vowed not to accept the bill.

* Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, is working on a proposal that could be added to the James bill or to an auto rental fee bill currently on the clerk's desk in the Assembly. It could also be included in a bill already under consideration in her Elections, Procedures and Ethics Committee.

Her tentative proposal seeks an interim legislative study to examine ways to solve the state's growing fiscal instability.

Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce representatives balked at such a study when Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, first suggested it last week. A legislative study would be subject to the Open Meeting Law and would afford residents more access to the process.

The chamber had suggested the meetings could take place among its members and interested parties, and that the results could be reported along the way.

* Democrats are quietly kicking themselves over the missed opportunity to grab hold of a workable tax or business fee hike that would raise money for the much-needed teacher's salaries.

But publicly Perkins contends his party "was the one pressing on this."

"We kept it as a front-burner issue," Perkins said. "At the end of the day, constituents don't care if it was Republicans or Democrats who came up with the plan. All they care about is that education is taken care of."

So the Democrats could counter the Republican-led business fee proposals with demands to remove the liability clause or approve the interim study on state finances.

* The original sponsor of the now-defunct Internet gaming measure, Merle Berman, R-Las Vegas, is still looking for a winning hand for the proposal.

The Internet gaming bill was left to die on the secretary's desk in the Senate on Monday's deadline day. Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, had suggested amending the provision to include his controversial gaming tax hike.

Now Berman said she hopes to find another measure to attach the Internet gaming proposal to in order to keep it in play.

* The other big piece of legislation still on the table is Assembly Bill 661 -- the omnibus energy bill. But that measure, at least the version that cleared the Assembly, is all but dead.

The Senate Commerce and Labor Committee struck out all but one provision of the bill when the panel voted unanimously to pass it Tuesday evening.

The only provision left is the so-called Repower Nevada portion * a section that allows large customers to leave Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific to purchase energy on the open market.

That's the provision that caused heartburn for Assembly Democrats. If the bill passes the Senate that way, it is possible the measure will end up in a conference committee.

So it has become increasingly likely that energy, Internet gaming and taxes will all play a role in coming days in how the state's political lines are drawn.

Nothing is dead until midnight next Monday.