Editorial: ‘Staggering’ is appropriate word

Friday, June 16, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

We understand Nevada's decision to spend nearly $5 million on a Virginia law firm to help in the fight against Yucca Mountain.

The proposal to open a dangerous nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas has generated millions of complex documents, and it is vital to the state's future that it be defeated in the courts.

But with 140 lawyers in the attorney general's office alone, is it really necessary to hire a private law firm to file lawsuits on Nevada's behalf because of construction defects afflicting state buildings?

A San Francisco law firm is being paid $3 million to do just that.

Another Virginia firm is being paid up to $325 an hour by the state to withdraw a bridge-building contract that created controversy in the Reno area.

And another San Francisco law firm was handed a $2.6 million contract to defend the state Public Works Board. The board had been sued by a construction company that was pulled off the job of building the state Veterans Home in Boulder City. The state lost the case.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, calls the amount of these outside contracts staggering, and we agree. The 2007 Legislature should hold hearings on why the state's own lawyers cannot handle the majority of routine lawsuits.