It’s time for ‘Christmas trees,’ ‘Leg-O-Matics’

Thursday, May 31, 2007 | 7:21 a.m.

CARSON CITY - State lawmakers meet for 120 days every two years, but it's during these last five days when bills land, almost stealth like, that can change the lives of every Nevadan.

They're known as "Christmas trees" and "Leg-O-Matics."

Similar to how cops rely on gallows humor to mask the occasional horrors of the job, lobbyists and lawmakers have developed such nicknames to obscure the sometimes messy, sausage-making process that turns bills into nicely encased laws.

As you read this, for instance, someone somewhere is trying to figure out how to hang his failing bill - an "ornament," if you will - onto the healthy bill of another legislator. The legislator with the healthy bill might allow the failing bill to hang on, as long as the hanger-on gives that lawmaker his vote.

Thus, the Christmas trees.

There are more invisible ways of adding to or changing a bill.

At a certain point near the end of the legislative session, the Senate and Assembly might be close to agreement on a bill, but not on its amendments. They may send the bill to a conference committee, where legislators hammer out a compromise that, they hope, will win the approval of their colleagues.

Sounds simple.

But these conference committee meetings are not bound by state open records laws, so they can be called without public notice.

"In the past, they would be held at the drop of a hat," said Lorne Malkiewich, director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau who has worked with legislators since 1983.

That's not as nefarious as it might sound. With dozens of meetings held within a short period and so quickly, posting them ahead of time isn't always feasible. But lawmakers today, Malkiewich added, are much better about voluntarily posting notices online and on a bulletin board in the hallway of the Capitol.

If some legislation lands in a stealthy way, other bills are simply cleverly disguised. Lawmakers can reword and rewrite, shift and adjust a bill so it has little or no connection to the intent and meaning of the original bill.

Imagine, in other words, a bill being reconstituted in the legislative version of a food processor. Hence, the Leg-O-Matic.

Malkiewich said the Legislature is trying to slow the Leg-O-Matics to a gentle blender versus high-powered pulverizer. New legislative rules require that changes made in conference committees must be "germane" to the intent and meaning of the original bill.

Some bills can be rewritten or amended in plain sight, but because there is such distraction caused by more controversial bills - such as this year's "green" building tax break re jiggering - that some amendments are added by a lobbyist and, virus like, are forgotten until their full effect is felt months or years later.

Already this year, a peculiar amendment was added to a bill tinkering with how state agencies enter into lease-purchase agreements to buy or improve property. In the Assembly Government Affairs Committee on May 17, Richard Daley, lobbyist for the Laborers International Union of North America No. 169, introduced an amendment loosely related to the idea of lease-purchase agreements. It asks to change the definition of "public work" to include any project that receives "financial incentives having a value of more than $100,000."

Take MGM Mirage's $7.4 billion CityCenter on the Las Vegas Strip. Built to specific environmentally friendly standards, CityCenter will receive millions of dollars in tax breaks from the state. Under that amendment, similar projects would be defined as a "public work." Construction work then would fall under prevailing wage levels, typically higher than nonunion wages.

Daley could not be reached for comment. Assemblywoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D- North Las Vegas, chairwoman of the Government Affairs Committee, said she didn't "know how" that amendment "got in there."

But now that it's been noticed, it may not survive the legislative session.

The question is, how many amendments are not spotted?