Consumer protection bills held hostage

Erin Neff

Monday, May 19, 2003 | 9:24 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The policy initiatives of any legislative session typically boil down to last-minute politics.

And nowhere is that more evident in the 2003 session than in consumer protection measures.

Assembly Democrats unveiled a priority list of bills for early passage this session. Most of those dealt with consumer issues and one of the topics that drew plenty of attention was so-called credit scoring.

The Assembly sent a bill to the Senate that would prohibit insurers from using a credit report to base insurance rates, but it never received a hearing.

The Assembly has already amended credit scoring into an innocuous Senate bill dealing with insurance.

But that might not be all.

Some believe Senate Bill 400, a measure sought by SBC and Sprint to ban state regulation of broadband services, is being held hostage just in case.

During a Saturday hearing on SB400 before the Assembly Commerce and Labor Committee, lawmakers of both parties seemed angered by the lack of consensus between the opposing telecommunications companies.

But their scolding of SBC and Sprint, which back the bill, and AT&T, Worldcom and XO Communications, which oppose it, offered no insight into the fight between the houses and parties on other bills.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, looked out at the eight witnesses on opposite sides of the issue and said: "I think everybody is wasting our time."

Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, said if he was about to make a motion on the bill that would hurt either side, he suspected the parties would start negotiating an agreement.

"If you can't solve it, we can't solve it," Hettrick implored.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, was less amenable, calling the hearings on SB400 a bunch of "he said, she said," and likening the breakdown in negotiations to the head-butting over the construction-defects bill.

The hearing adjourned abruptly when Perkins declared he had heard enough and stormed out of the room.

The most visible political maneuvering continues to be over the one-word distinction between the Assembly and Senate versions of telemarketing registries.

The Senate approved a do-call registry with a few exemptions, and the Assembly favored a do-not-call list. When the Senate got the Assembly version, it amended its bill into the Assembly's.

In a tit-for-tat, the Assembly gutted the Senate version in favor of its own.

The bills are obviously headed for a conference committee where legislative leaders, including the bill sponsors, Assemblyman Marcus Conklin, D-Las Vegas, and Sen. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, can hash out differences.

But Assembly Republicans caucused Friday, in part, to plan a voting block against the amended Senate Bill 238 -- which is now Assembly Bill 255 -- when it comes to the floor.