Friday, Feb. 14, 2003 | 11:24 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- Gov. Kenny Guinn wanted lawmakers to spend the first 45 days of the session focused on his first five tax proposals. Assembly Democrats plan to spend the first 45 days highlighting anything but.
At a press conference Thursday, Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, and Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, outlined their list of priorities for the first 45 days of the session.
"We think these are the issues lost in the shuffle of the tax debate," Perkins said.
The short list dabbles in education, consumer protection and anti-terrorism, but puts no focus on the hottest issue of the session -- taxes.
"We're not just talking about taxes or arguing about budgets, but doing things that help the public," Perkins said.
The Democratic priorities include two education items -- performance audits of public schools and the university and community college system and sanctioning of school administrators who don't comply with a state law regarding disruptive students.
"We need to let the public know we're spending their tax dollars wisely," Perkins said of the audits.
The performance audits would cost about $300,000 each and would be paid for by the public schools and university system. The audits would take several months and would start after the legislative session.
Perkins and Buckley said they didn't see a problem with the audits taking place after a session in which taxes are raised to pay for education. Asked whether Republicans would want to stall tax increases until after the results of the audit, Perkins said: "It's not a financial audit, it's a performance audit."
Thursday night Clark County School District officials said they welcomed the audit.
"We will always welcome any kind of audit," said Agustin Orci, deputy superintendent of instruction for the Clark County School District. "We're proud of what we do within the resources we're allotted." Edward Goldman, superintendent of the school district's southeast region, said audits are expensive, "but if the state wants to invest the money I think that's terrific."
"It's great to have the added perspective of what we're doing right, and what we need to fix." The disruptive students bill would simply enforce a law passed in 2001 requiring administrators to develop and implement a discipline plan to ensure that disruptive students don't keep others from learning.
Buckley focused much of her attention on consumer protection bills.
One would establish a prescription drug help desk in the office of Consumer Health Assistance to provide information and applications to seniors about pharmaceutical programs run by drug companies.
Most patients, and many doctors, are not aware of the free or reduced-price prescriptions available from the drug manufacturers.
"It's a great way to provide relief," Buckley said.
Buckley said Assemblymen Marcus Conklin and David Goldwater, both Las Vegas Democrats, are working on a bill to establish a do-not-call registry for telemarketers.
A similar measure passed the Assembly but died in the Republican-controlled Senate in 2001.
"The consumer's voice is pretty loud and clear about this," Buckley said. "I think support builds and builds for this proposal."
Another consumer-protection priority is a bill that would prevent insurance companies from using credit reports in calculating premium rates. That proposal is sponsored by Genie Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas; Sheila Leslie, D-Reno; Kelvin Atkinson, D-North Las Vegas, and Conklin.
Perkins made an anti-terrorism bill one of his top priorities for the first 45 days.
The proposal would add to the crime statutes a classification of terrorism with defined punishments. It includes listing terrorism as an aggravator to be considered in the penalty phase of death penalty trials.
It would also require hotel resorts to develop an emergency response plan and file it with public safety agencies.
"There needs to be a communication plan," Perkins said. "There could be 15,000 people in the MGM Grand at one time."
Buckley said that in addition to the main bills that were legislative priorities, leadership was also focused on other measures.
They would: help more senior citizens with the cost of prescription drugs; require disclosure of previous serious accidents before the sale of a car; prohibit the use of government funds for political purposes; require background checks for apartment managers at senior citizen complexes and establish tougher standards to prevent corporate fraud.
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