County opposes lawmakers’ actions

Wednesday, May 19, 2004 | 10:55 a.m.

The Legislature is passing dozens of bills that are costing counties and cities money, and the Clark County Commission wants the voters to tell it to stop.

Again.

In November 1992, Nevada voters overwhelmingly passed an advisory question on the ballot asking the Legislature to stop passing "unfunded mandates," or responsibilities passed to the local governments without the accompanying cash to fund the program. Only 20 percent of the votes cast opposed the idea.

And in 1993 the Legislature amended state law to require that sources of funding be specified whenever state government passes a new mandate that costs more than $5,000.

The Legislature, however, passed seven bills in 2003 alone that the lawmakers in Carson City exempted from their own rule against unfunded mandates, an analyst for the Nevada Association of Counties told the County Commission Tuesday.

Andrew List, the association's analyst, said some of the bills in the last legislative session that cost the counties and cities money included a requirement that the local governments subsidize their retiring employees health insurance, increased defense attorneys' fees in potential death-penalty cases and a voters' bill of rights that requires analyses of fiscal impacts for government rules.

List emphasized that the legislation might be good. The problem is that state lawmakers did not provide the money that counties and cities needed to comply with the new legislation, he said. And in addition to the immediate fiscal impact, some of the mandates have a cumulative impact that can cost millions for cash-strapped local governments, he said.

In many cases, the full impact on the finances of local government is still not clear from the bills passed by the Legislature, he said. Local governments also lack the resources to fully analyze the raft of bills with fiscal impacts that come up during the legislative session, List said.

In 2003, 22 bills had language exempting them from the Legislature's unfunded mandate prohibition, he said.

"NACO (the association) doesn't agree or disagree with any of this legislation," he said. "We want the voters again to tell the Legislature 'No more unfunded mandates.' "

The commissioners agreed. They asked county staff to prepare a resolution that would once again put the advisory question on the November ballot. The resolution has to come back before the commission by the end of June for inclusion on ballot.

"They (the legislators) have to pay their bills," Commissioner Myrna Williams said. "They just can't keep laying it off on the counties."

Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald said the county has another issue with the Legislature. She worries that the Legislature might make another run at keeping property taxes or motor vehicles taxes that now go to the local government.

"That is the next little battleground for those of us in the counties to tackle," she said.