Conferences to iron out wrinkles

Thursday, May 29, 2003 | 10:01 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- In these final days of the legislative session, representatives of each house are being assigned to small conference committees to work out differences between the Assembly and Senate on bills.

On Wednesday, the Assembly called for a conference on a key medical malpractice bill after an amendment altered Senate Bill 97.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, Assembly Judiciary Chairman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, and Assemblywoman Dawn Gibbons, R-Reno, were assigned to the committee.

Conference committees are traditionally composed of two members of the majority party and one from the minority party.

Gibbons' appointment Wednesday drew laughs. Gibbons was the lone Republican who voted for the amended SB97, joining the Democrats in their quest to add a second question to next fall's ballot.

The Senate will now appoint a trio of its own to meet in the conference. Another conference committee will examine the controversial reduction of the Governmental Services Tax, the tax people pay when they register a vehicles in Nevada.

Assemblyman David Goldwater, D-Las Vegas, who proposed the 25 percent reduction in the tax, will be joined by Assembly Taxation Chairman David Parks, D-Las Vegas, and Josh Griffin, R-Henderson, in the conference.

Republicans voted in a block against the reduction, stating they did not want to raise one tax -- the real property transfer tax -- just to reduce another.

Griffin had previously been a member of a subcommittee that worked on a bill Goldwater had early in the session to provide the reduction through removal of tax exemptions and increases in other small taxes.

A conference committee has also been established to work out differences between the two houses on telemarketing registry. Sens. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, Warren Hardy, R-Henderson, and Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, will meet with Assemblymen Marcus Conklin, D-Las Vegas, Goldwater and Griffin to try to agree on rules for a telemarketing registry.