Columnist Erin Neff: Legislators ready for everything but crises

Erin Neff

Friday, July 5, 2002 | 4:30 a.m.

MEDICAL malpractice. A hulking budget deficit. Construction defects. Nevada Power. Education and health care funding.

Rarely have so many crises threatened the quality of life in Southern Nevada during the state's political off-season.

Yet as lawmakers prepare for the 2003 legislative session, you wouldn't know it.

Lawmakers should be flooding the Legislative Counsel Bureau -- the folks who actually write the bills -- with ideas on how to raise revenue and keep doctors on the job.

Instead the first 234 bill drafts requested are replete with resolutions of praise and measures that actually counter sensible ways to address the crises.

Nevada will have a $1 billion shortfall in the next eight years, but lawmakers can only come up with four tax proposals, including Assembly- woman Genie Ohrenschall's proposed tax exemption for over-the-counter medicine or treatments ordered by a doctor.

By the time the '03 session sine dies, there won't be many sales left in Nevada to tax. The only broadening of the base these guys know is the 15 pounds they put on snacking at their desks in Carson City in odd-numbered years.

An unnamed lawmaker wants to hike the tobacco tax, Assemblyman Tom Collins thinks the business tax should be raised and there's Sen. Joe Neal's recurring and quixotic push to raise the gaming tax. Even if they were all to pass, we're still not close to solving the problem.

But the four bill drafts on medical malpractice -- highlighted by Sen. Ray Shaffer's no-cap tort reform -- aren't going to even open the dialogue into that crisis.

History has shown that it will be the special interests -- the doctors, lawyers and insurers in this case -- who draft the real law there (if they ever do come to some consensus.)

Lawmakers are too busy focusing their attention elsewhere.

Sen. Valerie Wiener, D-Las Vegas, wants government to be required to post signs in certain food establishments warning of the dangers of drinking alcoholic beverages during pregnancy.

That's just fine, but what about the danger of going through pregnancy without a doctor? That's a real problem playing out daily in Las Vegas as once-excited moms-to-be frantically search for an obstetrician who will treat them. Lawmakers might want to add good OB/GYNs to the laundry list of people already slated for memorials that will vie with license plate offerings to eat up hour upon hour of the limited legislative calendar.

Assemblyman Don Gustavson, R-Sun Valley, is so jazzed about one of his ideas that he requested a bill draft of it way back in October. Gustavson, famed for trying session after session to repeal Nevada's motorcycle helmet law, wants the Legislature to offer a special license plate supporting the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Who needs a mushroom cloud when you can pack heat on your plate?

Just as the 2001 session ended with a slew of plate authorizations -- including the ill-timed tags supporting atomic testing -- the 2003 session is bound to get mired in similar inanity.

Lawmakers are already jumping on the 9/11 bandwagon. Assemblywoman Vonne Chowning, D-North Las Vegas, wants a license plate -- yes, another license plate -- memorializing the victims of Sept. 11, 2001, and supporting efforts to suppress terrorism.

Sept. 11 will be honored again thanks to Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins' requested resolution memorializing the victims of the events of Sept. 11.

Will the Legislature honor whoever is proven to have died here in Las Vegas this month as a result of the closed trauma unit at University Medical Center?

What about memorializing programs and projects that Gov. Kenny Guinn was forced to axe, delay or shelve because there's no money?

Bills have already been requested to memorialize Dr. Elias Ghanem, Howard Winn, Moya Lear and Rollan Melton -- certainly a nice and deserving gesture -- but a move that also takes time away from the state's critical problems.

But while they're at it, lawmakers will also be commending the Geographic Alliance in Nevada, Kiwanis Day, long-serving legislators Joe Dini Jr. and Lawrence Jacobsen, Operation Helping Hand and Meghan Doughty for winning a Prudential Spirit of Community Award.

And those are just the resolutions submitted in the first batch of 234 bill drafts. Once the session convenes, most days will include more time smiling and rising to add congratulatory comments than voting on how to fund the schools.

That's why despite 120 days of operations, the state's real business only takes place in the closing 48 (or 49, as was the case in '01) hours of the session.

Maybe that's why one unnamed lawmaker wants to abolish daylight-saving time. It's kind of like those antiquated laws to take off the books, because no one in the Legislature makes good use of an extra hour of sunlight.

Perhaps the scariest bill draft of all comes from Assemblyman Bob Price, D-North Las Vegas, who is once again trying to provide for annual legislative sessions.

Can you imagine what they'd be capable of huddled in the Legislative Building every year?