Power shift looms, to lobbyists’ glee

Joe Schoenmann, Las Vegas Sun

Sunday, June 10, 2007 | 7:02 a.m.

CARSON CITY - In the halls of the Legislative Building, a triumvirate of lobbyists worked their cell phones like Wall Street trade r s, taking ideas, relaying them to legislators or aides to the governor, then getting speed-dialing back to their cells or rushing into cloistered rooms to broker deals.

"They won't go with that plan," one of the lobbyists told a boyish-looking governor's aide a few feet away from the lobbyists' table - conveniently located between the Senate and Assembly chambers.

Hours later a prominent state senator saw one of three lobbyists walking away. Someone jokingly told him, "There goes the shadow governor."

"I wish he was governor," the senator said.

In Carson City - in any state - that's power.

But you haven't seen anything yet. In 2011, the first year term limits enacted nine years ago take effect, lobbyists pretty much figure they'll have their way in the state Legislature.

In the words of one prominent lobbyist: "Our power will grow."

In late 2010 seven state senators and 11 members of the Assembly will be forced to give up their seats . The total number of years served by all 18 politicians is 300, 126 years of experience by senators and 174 years by members of the Assembly.

Conversely, 18 new and likely inexperienced representatives will take their place.

It could be interesting theater. Whether that's good for Nevada residents is another question.

Voters approved the term limits as a wave of similar laws swept the country. The purpose was to put an end to the career politician, a species accused of losing sight of the public's interest.

The limits have worked to a certain extent. In many states, however, the limits simply shifted power from newly inexperienced legislative bodies to the permanent cadres of lobbyists and bureaucrats, neither of which answers to voters. Also, many career politicians have survived by running for different offices.

Term limits now exist in 15 states. Lawmakers in Idaho and Utah repealed limits, saying that term limits already exist - in the form of elections.

In Nevada, voters have capped Assembly members at six two-year terms and senators at three four-year terms. The first session directly affected will be in 2011.

"It will be a revolutionary session," says Lorne Malkiewich, director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau, a nonpartisan department whose purpose is to provide legislators with information and research on issues, and teach them about the legislative process, which is bewilderingly fast-paced.

Success in Carson City depends as much on relationships as it does on rules, research and public policy. The masters of creating said relationships - the kind that typically end when the befriended loses his Senate or Assembly seat - are lobbyists.

To be sure, lobbyists are neither all good nor all bad, the same as can be said of legislators or plumbers, or journalists. Lobbyists are supposed to be smart and focused. Some are crafty ; others, straightforward.

And some have lived every two years in Carson City longer than most legislators, longer than most Nevadans have been in the state. With that sort of institutional knowledge, a handful of lobbyists wield great power, even respect, among the elected.

But every senator goes cautiously into meetings with lobbyists. No matter how back-slapping, drink-buying or joke-telling lobbyists may be, they are there not for lawmakers. They have clients.

Why then do lobbyists have such influence in Carson City? One reason is that they have information that's available nowhere else. The Legislative Counsel Bureau does what it can, but ultimately, it is no match for the staffs lobbyists have at their disposal to research issues and take the temperature of various constituencies.

Aware of the term limits, Malkiewich, head of the bureau, the state-mandate antidote to lobbyists and partisan politics, has plans to do more training for freshmen legislators in 2011. Malkiewich isn't as concerned about lobbyists as he is about a looming issue that will hit the same year that all those freshmen take office: reapportionment.

The Legislature undertakes the contentious task of reapportionment - divvying up Democratic and Republican voters by drawing lines to create Senate and Assembly districts - the year after completion of the U.S. Census. The last time this was done, lawmakers agreed to give Republican senators the drafting pens for senatorial districts, Malkiewich said, while Democratic Assembly members got to draw Assembly districts.

The Senate is under Republican control today. The Assembly is Democratic.

"We're going to have a lot of new people making major, major decisions," Malkiewich added. "It's all about how you draw the lines. You give yourself even a slight advantage? You take two of three seats."

In Carson City, legislators murmur but have taken no steps to repeal term limits. Some senators facing limits talk about running for the Assembly. Some Assembly members muse about running for the Senate. There is also talk of trying to get term limits overturned in court.

In any case, none of that will happen by 2011, a revolutionary year in a place that likes nothing better than to slowly evolve.