GOP hands out Assembly posts

Monday, Dec. 6, 2004 | 9:13 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Freshman Assemblyman Bob Seale, the former two-term state treasurer from Henderson, has gained a place on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

And so has first-termer Heidi Gansert of Reno.

Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, on Friday announced the Republican committee assignments for the 2005 Legislature and said he is infusing "new blood" into the committee that drafts the state's budget for the next two years.

He said both he and Assemblyman John Marvel, R-Battle Mountain, who are the veterans on the committee, will be back, and sophomore legislator Valerie Weber of Las Vegas will be the fifth member on the money committee. It will be her first session on the committee.

The 26 Democrats who control the 42-member Assembly will have nine members each on the major committees of Ways and Means and Judiciary and eight members on Government Affairs. Republicans will have five members on each of those committees.

Those three committees meet each morning before the floor session of the Assembly.

Hettrick complained that everybody should have a morning committee, but there is one GOP member who is left out. He said Sharron Angle of Reno has agreed to sit out any morning committee.

The makeup arranged by Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, makes it "so one member sits around doing nothing in the morning," complained Hettrick. He said the speaker could have arranged for one committee to have six Republicans and Democrats would still hold the majority.

Hettrick said Perkins is getting back at the GOP because the party put up a candidate to run against Perkins.

"This is political and is not good government," he said.

The committees and assignments:

Commerce and Labor: Francis Allen of Las Vegas; Gansert, Hettrick, Seale and Rod Sherer of Pahrump.

Education: Angle, Joe Hardy of Boulder City, Brooks Holcomb of Reno and Garn Mabey of Las Vegas.

Elections, Procedures and Ethics/Constitutional Amendments: Angle, Gansert, Holcomb, Seale and Scott Sibley of Las Vegas.

Government Affairs: Pete Goicoechea of Eureka, Chad Christensen of Las Vegas, Tom Grady of Yerington, Hardy and Sibley.

Growth and Infrastructure: Allen, Angle, Grady, Hettrick and Weber.

Health and Human Services: Angle, Hardy, Mabey and Weber.

Judiciary: Allen, Carpenter, Holcomb, Mabey and Sherer.

Ways and Means: Gansert, Hettrick, Marvel, Seale and Weber.

Natural Resources, Agriculture and Mining: Carpenter, Goicoechea, Grady and Marvel.