Minority panel eyeing range of topics

Monday, April 26, 2004 | 9:39 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The newly created Nevada Commission on Minority Affairs was to hold its first meeting today.

The nine-member advisory panel was established by lawmakers in 2003 when legislators approved and the governor signed SB 249, a bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno. The commission has no power to make changes.

The bill "arose for the long need of a voice of minorities statewide," says Bert Ramos, a Reno lobbyist who represents the Hispanic American Voter Association and says he authored the legislation that Raggio introduced. "It's a fragmented voice now."

The commission will meet, hear from various groups and make recommendations to Gov. Kenny Guinn and to the Legislature.

The bill was "three years in the making," said Ramos, and had nothing to do with findings of racial profiling by Nevada law enforcement officers that were made by a prior study, he said.

Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, the first black in the Nevada Senate, said he tried in the 1980s to get a minority commission established. But he said the 2003 commission is "Raggio's baby."

"I don't know how effective it will be," Neal said.

He said the panel's impact could be limited because it doesn't have any money, except the funds to pay for meeting expenses.

Neal said he couldn't predict how much progress the commission would make.

He referred to a committee set up by former Las Vegas City Councilman Frank Hawkins that looked into city contracts with private businesses to determine if minority-owned companies were getting their fair share of the business.

Neal said the Hawkins committee appeared to have more teeth than this new commission.

Today's session is billed as an organizational meeting for the commission.

Panel members won't receive salaries but will be paid for their expenses.

Commission members will discuss the availability of jobs and affordable housing, and they'll talk about how to help minorities start their own businesses.

The commission will look at ways to create networks between minority and nonminority businesses and is slated to work with the Nevada Equal Rights Commission to inform residents about laws that bar discrimination and the way that complaints should be filed.

Members of the commission in addition to Ramos are Jennifer Angel, Bob Brewer, Tony Sanchez and James Yu, all of Clark County, Brian Wallace of Douglas County and Lucille Adin, Carina Black and Elena Brady, all of Reno.

Ramos represents the Hispanic American Voter Association; Adin, the Black Professional Women of Northern Nevada; Angel, the Central American Coalition of Las Vegas -- Seven Countries; Black, the Northern Nevada International Center; Brady, the Filipino Association of Northern Nevada; Brewer, the Urban Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas; Sanchez, the Latin American Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas, Wallace, the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California and Yu, the Asian Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas.

Ramos said most of the commissioners don't know each other and the intent is to have a round-table discussion. "There will probably be as many opinions as commissioners," he said.

The law says the commission will expire in 2007 but Ramos said there "will be no problem in making it permanent."

Ramos said he thinks the Legislature will pay attention to the commission because of the state's growing minority population.

Figures in 2001 showed 64.6 percent of Nevada's population was white; 6.9 percent black; 21.3 percent Hispanic; 5.8 percent Asian; and 1.3 percent American Indians.

Referring to last year's passage of the bill creating the commission, Ramos said: "This is one of the few bright spots in last year's Legislature."

SB 249 passed the Legislature with only three dissenting votes Republican Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick of Gardnerville, Sharron Angle of Reno and Don Gustavson of Sun Valley.

Today's 11:30 a.m. meeting was to take place in the legislative building in Carson City and at the Sawyer State Office Building, room 4401, in Las Vegas, with the open-to-the-public proceedings simulcast between the two sites.