Friday, Oct. 18, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.
Sharp rhetoric -- and a split among board members -- punctuated a Southern Nevada Water Authority meeting Thursday.
As with every recent authority board meeting, the dominant issue was the proposal to buy Nevada Power Co. and make the electric monopoly a public agency.
Water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy said the campaign against the water authority's $3.2 billion bid to buy the electric company was based on "a lie."
Mulroy and consultants to the authority again promised a 20 percent reduction in electric rates if their bid is successful, with no disruption of tax revenue for local governments and no wholesale layoffs of electric company employees.
Morgan Stanley consultants Lyle Miller and Ray Spitzley also said electric rate increases, already up 46 percent since 1999, would continue without the takeover.
But water authority board member Shari Buck rapped the agency for putting out information on the bid in the agency's quarterly publication WaterWise, which goes out to hundreds of thousands of Las Vegas area water users.
She said the information could affect the vote on the public power issue on the November ballot. Question 14 has become a referendum on the water authority bid, but the advisory question itself asks only if state law should be changed to allow a hostile government takeover of a power company.
The flier only "inflamed" an already contentious issue, she said.
"I'm disappointed with the tone of what's going on in the whole community," she said. "I'm disappointed with the tone of the water authority. ... Nevada Power has done very good things for our community."
Other board members reacted with obvious anger to Buck's criticisms.
"All I find in this publication are facts," said board member and Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera. "Basically (the flier) talks about the water authority's offer to Nevada Power and the ensuing benefit to our community."
And Bryan Nix, Boulder City councilman and authority board member, said the bid has become a political issue only because Nevada Power has deliberately mixed the ballot question and the bid on the table.
"They're really two totally different issues," Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, authority board member and Clark County Commissioner, agreed.
Buck voted to support the bid in August and September. But Thursday Buck said she supported the process so far in order to gain more information on the issue, "not necessarily to take over Nevada Power."
Buck, a North Las Vegas councilwoman, has noted that she has many Nevada Power employees in her district. Company employees publicly oppose both the takeover bid and the question on the November ballot.
Buck said the water authority and Nevada Power should work together in a partnership.
"At least explore it," Buck said. "I think the water authority and Nevada Power should sit down and find a way to work together."
Nevada Power Vice President Jack Leone said the company has always been open to discussing any cooperative venture with the water authority, but details on how any partnership could be structured would have to be worked out.
But Mulroy said a partnership would mean water ratepayers "would be propping up" a for-profit company teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
"You've made the public their banker," Mulroy said.
Mulroy told the authority that opponents to Question 14 have inappropriately mixed the ballot issue and the bid on the table. The opponents, she said, are conducting a campaign of misinformation and misrepresentation.
The water authority and its small army of consultants on the technically friendly takeover bid have promised to continue paying local and state taxes, she said.
But the Citizens Against 14 coalition has hammered the issue, arguing that the local and state governments could lose $75 million annually.
Mulroy said the water authority's promised rate reduction and the continued flow of tax money will instead benefit local governments.
"Not only will local governments not lose any revenue, they will gain revenue," she said -- about $21 million in savings. That would be $6 million to the Clark County School District alone.
Carole Vilardo, president of the Nevada Taxpayers Association and organizer of the Citizens Against 14 campaign, said her coalition stands by the ads that have blanketed local television and radio.
She noted that state law would not force the authority to pay the tax bills, despite the promise. Vilardo said the water authority is responding to the issue now because of the Nevada Power-backed media blitz.
"Until we raised the issue, (Mulroy) never addressed the issue, and there was nothing in law to have her make the money up," Vilardo said.
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