Randolph Townsend

By Richard N. Velotta

Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Randolph Townsend is a Republican senator representing Washoe County’s District 4, but he spends enough time in Southern Nevada to know Las Vegas’ issues well.

By the end of his current term, Townsend, who turns 62 this week, will have served longer in the state Senate — 28 years — than anybody but his Reno Republican colleague, Sen. Bill Raggio. But Townsend will be term-limited out after the 75th session closes later this year.

Townsend discussed business issues and the challenges that lie ahead when the Legislature convenes next month.

IBLV: You’re a Washoe County legislator, but you spend a lot of time in Southern Nevada and have a number of business contacts here. Although this gives you better insight into some of Southern Nevada’s issues, does it create any conflict with your constituency?

Townsend: I don’t think so because, at the end of the day, we’re all Nevadans and whatever is working and good for Northern Nevada is good for Southern Nevada. But more important, due to the size and the economic strength and the size of the population in Southern Nevada, whatever is good for Southern Nevada is going to always help the 16 other counties. The older you get, the more you’re in the Legislature and the longer you’re there, the more you understand the interplay among all 17 counties. The growth and the strength of Clark County plays a more predominant influence, so it’s always good to know what’s going on here because when you balance the interests of the state, you really need to understand how big things are here in Southern Nevada in terms of population, economic drivers, jobs, traffic, etc.

How would you characterize your rapport with Gov. Jim Gibbons and the new Democratic leader, Sen. Steven Horsford?

I’ll start with Sen. Horsford. I have known him since the private sector. I’ve known him when he was — I guess one of the great terms would be “cub reporters,” it seems like that’s what he was doing. He’s always been a very quick study. I think he’s a very thoughtful individual who is going to do very well because of his intellectual capability and his personal charm. Where his challenge is going to come is I’m not sure he understands how big and dominating the position is. It tends to overwhelm you. That’s something we all learn when we get there. I have a positive relationship with him and will continue to do so. I’m trying to share the value of my experience with the new leadership because it’s going to be here long after those of us who are affected by term limits are gone. We want to share that when we can to help them find their way. I think that Nevada has always been that way. You try to help folks. You put the partisan stuff aside after the election.

And how about Gov. Gibbons?

I’ve known Jim for years because we’re both from the north. But he’s been gone. He’s been in Congress most of the time. When he was in the (Nevada) Legislature, he was in the Assembly while I have only been in the Senate in my tenure. I know what his principles are and he’s not shy about sharing those with anyone, either privately or publicly. I can assure you that the ones that he has shared with me privately match the ones that he is sharing with the public. And he believes in them, whether people agree with him or not. I can call him on a regular basis, and I do try to give him what limited insight I may have. He and his staff both call for advice. I don’t know whether that’s a sign that I’m getting really old so they call the old guys or if it’s any kind of personal thing, but I’ve tried to maintain a good rapport with all the governors I’ve served with.

Many observers are expecting this session to be a showdown between the governor’s no-new-taxes stance and his opponents’ belief that taxes are necessary to fund the state’s many needs. Do you share that assessment?

I don’t. I think there’s an awful lot of wishing by the interest groups, including the political parties and some in the media, who like the concept of conflict. Well, at the end of the day, the guy who lives next door to you, all he cares about is, “Hey, did you get anything done that might help me as a Nevadan?” They’re busy. They’re getting up every day, they’re going to work, helping their families, trying to get school done, trying to pay for the groceries, hoping they still have a job. They aren’t going to spend every waking hour in front of a blog trying to figure out something Sen. Townsend said, Gov. Gibbons said or the speaker said. They’re just not going to do it. It’s inside baseball that too many of us get caught up in, the thing called the echo chamber where you keep listening to each other, and it’s repetitive.

I think that’s one of the things that’s important for us as we move through the issue of education. That is, you have to instill in your kids that there’s so much written out there that they’re not seeing because we don’t read anymore. We’re a visual media kind of thing. We’re passive, we’re not active. When you and I grew up, it was about activity. You either went outside and played or you were inside reading. There wasn’t the plunked-in-front-of-the-TV-or-video-game thing or something like that. And the fact that we’re losing the activity known as reading is very detrimental to us intellectually. After the (Sarah) Palin thing, somebody asked me how many periodicals I read. I said 40 a month. Now do I get through every single article? No. But I will tell you that I blow through them pretty quickly and don’t know what I’d do without them because that’s the way I was raised. I’m hoping that we can raise a generation of people who understand reading and the value of reading because reading gives you multiple insights. Back to your question, let’s put all that conflict aside and move the ball downfield.

Gibbons has made it clear that he has no appetite for raising taxes or adding fees. Do you expect lawmakers will look to new revenue streams, approve unfunded mandates, cut spending elsewhere or ignore the governor’s wishes and increase taxes and hope they have the votes to overturn a veto?

The leadership of this particular session, hopefully, will look at two things. That is: What has the governor put on the table that legitimately needed to be analyzed and either merged or deleted from state government. And if there are things of value that have been around 10 to 20 years that just don’t serve the purpose and we’re not getting a value for what we’re expending, then we should get rid of them. Then, when that’s all done, you can go through K-12, you can go through higher ed, you can go through some of the state agencies. You can do a lot of that and all of us, particularly the old ones who have been around a long time and have seen a lot of it, we can give you a lot of our opinions on that. At the end of the day, I don’t think you can get there (balance the budget). So you are going to have to enhance revenue, better known as taxes. I just don’t think you can get there. And I’m a business guy. None of us wants taxes. We’d rather pay our employees more, we’d rather give them a bigger bonus, we’d rather do nicer things for them or invest in the company or buy more equipment. But at the end of the day, if you can’t get there for what we term basic services, which is education, health care and corrections, then what option is there? You say, “Great surgery. The patient died, but boy you were really terrific. You looked good, and when they sewed him up, he was really looking good.” You just can’t do that.

Is there any way for a compromise to be reached?

Absolutely. Both sides are going to have to give in. I think those who just want to see government grow have to start understanding that isn’t the way the world works. It isn’t the way businesses work, it isn’t the way families work. Government has to be run efficiently. It’s not a business. It’s a government and that’s much different, but it can run efficiently like a business if you know what you’re doing and you prioritize. So the other side has say if you’re short money, you have to step up and be counted. None of us likes it. Ninety-five percent of the issues we deal with, anybody can deal with. We can train you in a day. But they send you there for the other 5 percent. And these kind of tough decisions are the ones that you have to do. I know, as a businessman, that I don’t want higher education to start to regress because I hire those folks. Everybody we hire is a graduate from some university somewhere, mostly with graduate degrees. I’d be cutting my own throat as a businessman, and it’s just not good sense.

If it came to it, do you envision the Legislature having the votes to overturn a gubernatorial veto?

If it were a legitimate, important issue such as revenue that fills the gap, and there was legitimate accountability on the other side or cuts on the other side, I don’t have any doubt in my mind that they would be there.

Does the state need new taxes or is it just a matter of modifying the existing tax structure?

That’s a great question and I’m really glad you asked it because most people don’t ask it that way. In 1981, when the state reacted to California’s Proposition 13 from 1978, Joe Mathews passed a Prop 13-type thing in Nevada called Question 6. The Legislature said, “If you won’t do it again, we’ll fix the property tax problem.” So what they did was they cut property taxes in half and doubled the sales tax. That’s in essence what happened. Then, the formula of local school support tax, supplemental city and county relief tax came in and we had to put together this unique thing. My colleague Sen. Gibson — a remarkable intellect, the (Henderson) mayor’s father, who I was lucky enough to serve with — when he put all of this together, a number of the guys involved, a lot of the guys that aren’t involved anymore, it was to respond to a growing property tax problem in the boom of the late ’70s. Sounds a little familiar to ’03. And although we capped things in ’03, the problem that we don’t look at in terms of property is it’s the only stable base — it’s the only stable base we have to support education. And we’ve constantly had this argument where the solution is to find a legitimate base of property tax to support education and then in the boom times, you separate that boom money and you can’t put it into the base budget. That should be stuff for one-time expenditures — new computers for kids, training for kids for those computers so that you don’t build into the base budget, so when that base starts to go down, you’re stuck with it and you have to make up for it in some other way. That, in essence, is the problem in a nutshell. Should we change that? I believe we should. I believe we should go back to a much more stable base and quit relying on gaming, which when I got there, we and New Jersey were it. Now, the whole world’s in the gaming business. And sales tax is very much a function of not only travel to Southern Nevada, but it’s also a function of the worldwide economy. So those are two bad ways to set tax policy. So I think we ought to go back to a much more stable tax base, which is property. And if you want to look at additional revenue to broaden the base, the thing that we already have in place is the modified business tax. To go to a third one, I don’t think makes a great deal of sense because right now we really don’t have any cost to implement the (modified business tax), so if you were to raise it, it’s of little cost. What you want to do when you do taxes is you don’t want to come up with something that costs tons and tons and tons of money that you can’t put to the programs you want to do.

What’s your read on the governor’s attempt to name a tourism director?

I don’t think it played well because we do have a mechanism and that mechanism is what should be followed, whether you like it or not. I advised the governor that I thought it was a really bad idea to get into the debate anyway because one of the things that I was recommending to him and his staff was the elimination of the Commission on Tourism and the Commission on Economic Development. I was there when we put it in. I was one of the biggest supporters of both of them. They have proved not as effective as we’d like, given the amount of money we raise. And priorities have changed. Those priorities now are how are we going to get the best conceivable education out of the dollars we have. So priorities change. We, of course, have a prison issue and the one that’s so hard to get your arms around is our Medicaid problem and all our human resource problems. So when he mentioned this issue of, “Gee, I want to appoint this guy I know,” and I’m not familiar with the gentleman, I said I just don’t think that’s going to fly, given the fact you’re trying to look for additional savings. So why would you get into that kind of fight? There’s going to be enough fights out there. We don’t have to go looking for too many. But if the governor feels strongly about it, let him take his best shot. I just don’t think it’s a fight worth fighting.

So you prefer the elimination of the two commissions instead of merging them?

I don’t think they have value any longer for the amount of money we put in. They were, I think, good-faith efforts. I believed in them strongly. They may not have been funded at the level we should have done, particularly on the economic development side. But nonetheless, once in awhile, in government like you do in business and you do at your home, you simply say, “Can we afford that program anymore?” I just don’t think we can. Both of them should go.

What do you consider to be the pivotal issues confronting the 2009 session?

The thing that’s kind of thrown that very good question a little bit askew is the impact of the international economy. It has put such a strain on the financial institutions and when you start to affect those, you get down to everyday Nevadans because of their mortgages and because of their jobs. And now you add to it the pressure on our tourism industry, which, in essence, is Las Vegas. Anybody who lives outside Clark County is being very parochial if he doesn’t understand that this is the tourism industry, it’s not us in Reno. When you add to it that downturn for many reasons — a lot of it is the international impact — it puts the biggest strain on our budget. The question is a good one and what is the biggest question? It’s what are we going to prioritize? What do we want? What do we, as a group of 2 1/2 million people, want from our state government? That’s the single biggest question facing us. The debate is not whether we have enough money. The debate is what should we give the public? What does it want from us? We can figure out a way to fund it. That’s not the problem. The problem is priorities. What should they be? I think going in — and what I’m hoping to do over the next couple of weeks, working with the new leadership — is trying to define those priorities. Let’s get focused on that. Let’s not get focused on some homeowners’ association bill that you can’t fix peoples’ animosity for their neighbor. You just can’t do it. And we spend hours on those things when we really should spend hours on the priorities of state spending or tax policy. That should be the real priority.

Which of the prefiled bills or proposals that have been aired before the session are most likely to win approval?

Probably the most important ones are going to be changes in property tax, probably modified business tax. Some of the reductions in the budget are likely to pass. There may be some enhancements that I’ve seen in mental health. Those are the ones that have the greatest basis of potential support. In other words, when you look at them, you go, “Wow, that’s really kind of important, we’ve got to deal with that.” Some of the nonfinancial, nonfiscal issues that are out there, you’re going to see labor-management issues because as you know those changes that have been articulated by the debate during the presidential campaigns. (Barack Obama’s) view had to change really quickly when the economy changed. So his priorities, those issues that really aren’t budget or fiscal issues, like ours, are going to become back burner because people are going to be so focused on the budget. But I think there’s labor-management issues out there that have been brewing for a long time that need very cool, calm heads to get in a room and have legitimate debate, some good articulation, not the wild-eyed and the hysterical from both sides that don’t solve the problem. If there’s a legitimate challenge in a labor issue, then let’s figure it out. Let’s define the problem correctly because maybe the bill doesn’t address the problem. I’ve been around so long, I see these bills in front of me as chairman of Commerce and Labor, I read the bill and then I listen to the testimony and I say, “Well the bill has nothing to do with what you just testified to.” And they say, “Well I have this problem.” And I say, “That’s fine, but we have the bill. Do we want the bill — and if so you have to testify to it — or do you want us to solve your problem, because now we have to write another bill?” That happens to me four, five or six times a session. So if we have labor-management issues, let’s define them correctly. Maybe we can solve them. Maybe we can solve them without a bill. Maybe it’s a regulatory issue. Maybe it’s a lack of communication.

Which are the least likely to win approval or will go to the back burner?

Unfortunately, freshmen (legislators) are treated just like freshmen in high school are. Generally speaking, their bills are not likely to go anywhere, unless leadership says, “Well, we’ll put your name on this bill because it’s really a lot like the one you wanted.”

That’s just a normal course of initiation that’s a part of it, so you could go down and read the new people’s bills and you’re probably going to see those not survive. I haven’t seen anything that’s not going to pass. It would be a little different if it was Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other, but Democrats control both houses, so if they have one that we might not think is very important — a resolution or something — and they want to pass it, they’ll pass it.

Are there any black clouds on the horizon for the business community?

There’s a lot of perception that any increase in the sales tax is a problem for many businesses. But as you know, a great percentage — anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of sales tax — for the state comes from our nonresidents. So that’s always been a bit of a selling point. It’s not always sold, but it’s a bit of a selling point that you’re really only paying about 60 cents on the dollar for that tax dollar. I think that’s one you have to look at. The question’s a good one, because I know you’re not limiting it just to a tax question. There are many changes in regulations that can happen that, in essence, are a tax increase. If there’s an overburdensome reporting requirement that comes as a result of a bill that was passed during a certain session, that, in essence, becomes a tax on a business. I think those things have to be very, very thoughtfully put through. I’ve worked with (AFL-CIO executive) Danny Thompson for 30 years. I have a high regard for him and I’m hoping that he and I spend some time together because there have been these terrible tragedies in Southern Nevada in these high rises with regard to the construction of them and deaths. So I’m sure there’s going to be a plethora of bills to fix all of those problems. That, you have to be really sensitive to as you move forward and really look hard at what was each individual incident, what went into it, what can we do to help it without adding a burden to the business that won’t give any benefit to the worker. We’ve done that in the past. “We’re going to do A, B and C and we’re going to have all these hurdles.” And it never really helped the workers. You’ve got to be really careful. This is a little more complex than people think it is.

Many business leaders talk about the need for a well-educated workforce and a diversified economy, yet these same leaders oppose tax increases or fees that are needed to pay for it. How can that conflict be overcome?

Those of us who are in the positions we’re in are going to have to ask the business community to sit down and be realistic. If you want to offer a no to taxes or no to additional revenue, then tell us what you want from the educational system. Give us a plan. Anybody can sit in the back row and say no. Anybody can. Or anybody can sit in the front row and say yes every time. That’s not the point of what we do. The point, particularly in the Senate, is we’re supposed to be the deliberative body. If the business community keeps coming to us for “help,” then what I’m asking them in return is if you don’t like what we’re funding now and your argument is, “We don’t get anything and we keep putting money in,” then show me the alternative. Help me — me being a legislator — we’re listening. You tell us what you want. I have suggestions, I’ve put them on the table and have gone statewide and made these presentations. I have no idea why we need a Ph.D in history. I don’t hire them. The gaming industry doesn’t hire them. The car industry doesn’t hire them. Maybe one newspaper might want one. But that doesn’t require a doctoral-level program. What do we do? We have the Harrah’s School of Hotel Administration. Why isn’t it singularly the best one in the world, bar none? If you’ve got to be able to get the best people from Cornell and bring them here, than the university system should have carte blanche to do that. And we get hung up with these little boxes of pay. Let me tell you something: If you want Phil Satre, the now-retired chairman of what is now Caesars Entertainment, and you want him to be the Satre Chair of Management, he doesn’t come free. You’ve got to pay those guys. If you want the best teachers, you’re going to have to pay them. For crying out loud, a kid could leave high school and go over to one of our fine facilities’ parking cars and earn $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year without any kind of education. Why should he get excited to go to school? That means you better go find really good teachers to motivate that kid to go on and do other things. That doesn’t necessarily mean everybody should go to the university. A lot of people have technical skills. Many of us aren’t blessed with those kinds of things. We don’t have the high-tech skills and we don’t have that other kind of skill of fixing the car. We’re in the West. Everybody drives a car. You’re always going to have a job, yet we don’t show people there’s a lot of merit in that. There’s a lot of value in that. You see a guy who puts eight hours a day in under a hood, I’m telling you that that’s a remarkable achievement. But yet we don’t value that, and we have to learn to change that. It’s about the direction you go in, it’s not about, “This direction is the only one that makes a lot of money.” I’ve got to tell you, we’ve got to get away from that and start saying that a guy that can figure out the new cars — because they’re all computerized, they’re all done with chips — the guy who can figure that out is a pretty smart guy to me. When you go back to the question of the business community, they’ve got to tell us. If you don’t want your taxes raised, then tell us what you want in return. And they talk about, “We want accountability.” OK, define that for me. Help me help you. I’m not trying to be confrontational. I’m saying I’m offering solutions, some of my colleagues are offering solutions, we’re putting them out there, we’re letting everybody dissect them. I think we ought to be at the university level and we ought to have the best college education in the world. The best School of Medicine in the world. The rising star is the Boyd Law School. We’ve had a rising star forever in the Desert Research Institute that nobody seems to appreciate. We need mental health techs and medical social workers. We should do those very, very well. Nurses? Hello, for crying out loud, we can’t get enough nurses. That should be the best program in the world. Now what is that going to cost? Maybe it doesn’t leave much money for other things. That’s OK. We should be really good at those. I’m just offering that as a forum for dialogue to say, “What do you want from us?” Because we can’t be all things to all people and we’ve tried to be.

Hotel room taxes are a tempting target to pay for some of the many proposals under consideration. Yet the tourism industry says it needs the money for marketing to stay ahead of ever-increasing competition. Are room taxes fair game as a “new” revenue source?

You ask a good question because in the mind of a legislator, anything is fair game in terms of a revenue source. But in this case, I think the dialogue that was started by a number of the properties, six, eight or 12 months ago, that dialogue has changed substantially because suddenly the amount of rooms that were going to be built aren’t going to be built. No. 2, the rates have dropped substantially and the occupancy has fallen off. So all of that money that people were going to plug in, that money isn’t there anymore. Is it a legitimate opportunity to have that dialogue? I think so. A number of these properties have come forth and a number of them aren’t budging. And that’s OK. But let’s talk about what is needed. I was traveling the other day, and I went into a hotel newsstand and they charged me tax on my newspaper. Now, first of all, I’m fumbling around for 37 cents or something and it dawned on me: Hello, we don’t do that here. What are we doing? Why would you tax a newspaper? Now, for the next two hours on the plane I’m thinking, “What was that about?” So when you look at specific taxes for specific industries, I think you’re going down a really bad road, and I’ll tell you why. If you’re just doing it for revenue purposes, it’s really a bad model because it becomes purely political. Who can we tax that would give us the least amount of grief? Now if you’re doing it to change behavior — for instance a tax on cigarettes, a tax on tobacco, a tax on alcohol — that’s a separate debate from a revenue debate. That’s a behavior debate. So when you look at taxes that we’ve discussed — property, modified business tax — they’re the broadest of the bases because we all benefit from that. If you don’t like the philosophy that an educated society is one that benefits everybody, then I can understand you don’t like any taxes, and I respect that position. But I, my family, my neighbors, we benefit from an educated society, we benefit from a civil society, one that has fine police, fine (firefighters), great hospitals — we benefit from that as a society, even though we may not use any of it, or at least don’t think we use any of it. Then, you’ve got a whole new debate with those people who say, “I don’t happen to think an educated society is worth X.” That’s a debate that’s almost tough to have.

Give some of your assessments of upcoming issues. What can we see on the education front?

There are those that I’d like to see happen and those that are likely to happen. Let’s talk about the “likely to happen” ones. The argument over the 6 percent pay cut will be the No. 1 argument. That’s going to be a bloodbath. That was in the State of the State. The response to that from the (Democratic) leadership was not only “No” but “Hell no.” We’re going to go through that, and then we’ll have some business leaders stand up and say, “We can’t cut education.” That’s going to be the primary debate. The second debate will be about class size again. This kind of comes and goes. It started under Gov. (Bob) Miller about whether we need to put that kind of money into class-size reduction. There are all kinds of statistics. That debate will be secondary. The elimination of certain programs will be down the list a little bit. That’s where the first debates in education are going to be. But that first one is going to be so visceral to people that it may just suck all the oxygen out of the room, relative to handling the others.

Transportation and infrastructure needs and toll roads or high-occupancy vehicle lanes?

Both are really important, as long as my colleagues fully understand the relationship of the federal government on this one. That is, a lot of our funding is so tied to a federal gas tax. There is probably going to have to be a legitimate effort made to do the easiest things we can given the challenges in Southern Nevada to come up with these new lanes, possibly a toll road, at least a pilot project for a toll road to see if it works like it does in other communities. Without question, the perceived transfer of wealth from the South to the North all these years, based on the “bridge to nowhere” or whatever that thing’s been called, no one understands the transportation needs better as a guy who lives in Washoe County than me, because I’m here on a regular basis. It’s abhorrent. The only thing that’s saving this community at the moment is we have had a suppressed tourism industry and it’s kind of allowed this community to take a breather. But as that comes back, it’s only going to exacerbate again. If I had the proverbial magic wand, I would take all of the money that’s available instantly and get it here so that you can start the programs. The widening of Interstate 15 is already going on, but boy, even that slows down the community because you’ve got to close a lane to get another lane open. It’s a monumental project. I think the transportation officials down here led by my good friend, Bruce Woodbury — there’s another reason to have term limits, huh? Let’s throw out the best guy they’ve ever had in Southern Nevada — I think what they have done has been a remarkable job and I’m able to compare it to what we’ve done in the north. Down here, you build big highways and you go way out of your way in these open-space lands and then you grow to the highway. We just let things build and then we try to run a highway through a finely developed community. We haven’t quite caught on to it quite yet. I think you’ve done a good job, you’ve just become overwhelmed. No one knew it was coming. This was cancerous, let’s face it. So, I’d start with putting as much money and as quickly and legitimately — you can’t waste it — but as legitimately as possible into the programs that need to be done right now while you have a little breathing time.

Any probability of the Legislature amending the statute to permit tolling as a source of revenue?

I would hope so.

Any opportunities for private-public partnerships?

Without question. I’ve listened to former Rep. Dick Gephardt on four or five occasions. I’ve had lunch with him, and he’s now in the private sector and he’s a man I’ve always respected anyway.

We might have seen this happen long before the financial community collapse. It might have already been in place. I think those public-private partnerships are probably a new dawn of financing that we haven’t seen before because local governments and state governments for that matter just aren’t going to be able to do it.

How do you think President Obama’s economic stimulus plan would affect Nevada and what do you think the state’s share would be compared with other states?

I discussed this with Sen. (Harry) Reid when he was here and he’s very aware of the billion dollars we’d certainly like to have for transportation in Nevada. The issue, of course, is going to be a public perception one. As you know, somehow the Museum for Organized Crime has become part of the debate. That isn’t helpful to anyone. Yes, it’s amusing, but at the end of the day, Nevada has legitimate water, flood and highway needs — they’re not any better than any other state’s, they’re no worse than any other state’s. They’re very legitimate needs that if somebody wants to spend an hour in this community and drive around, you can physically see them. The challenge for the ... stimulus package is one of East vs. West. The West is the growth package. The East is the repair package. They need infrastructure: bridges, roads, electric transmission, floods. They need that repaired. They have a lot of it, it just needs to be updated and fixed. In the West, we need more electric transmission. We need more of a grid. We need more highways. We need more bridges. I think if this stimulus package can be shared in that manner and understood that they’re really two different things, then I think Nevada benefits.

How about state employees’ retirement programs?

Very serious. I’m hoping that those of us who have been around this, who have understood this, who looked at it under Gov. (Kenny) Guinn understand we have to separate the current employees from the future employees. We just can’t afford to do it any other way. There is a group of us, and I think we’re in the majority, that believe any contract we’ve had with a state employee in the past where they have delivered on what they said — I’m going to work for 20 years, I’m going to work for 25, I’m going to work for 30 — for those people, we need to honor our part of the bargain. They did theirs, now we have to honor ours. They need to be separated from these new folks, but these new folks have to understand it’s not going to be like the old folks. We can’t subsidize health care and retirement benefits. If we start just with that one small effort, I think we go a long way to helping the next couple of generations of legislators to get through this.

Energy policy?

Probably the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life and I never intended on ever getting involved in energy 30 years ago and here I am still talking about it. We have an opportunity to continue to lead the nation in a lot of areas, and we are very fortunate in the fact that the senior senator who is the majority leader of the Senate in this country is very excited about energy policy. We’re also very fortunate we have Jon Wellinghoff sitting on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission because one of the big problems we have is transmission and that’s the ... commission’s responsibility. I also think there are a number of advantages. Our business community, particularly in the hotel and gaming industry, have really understood sustainability and conservation like no other group. When you look at the facilities built here, they take your breath away when you realize what has been done at the new Encore, what’s being done at CityCenter, what Boyd has plans for at Echelon — these are world leaders in energy conservation and sustainability. So I think if we can continue that while we continue to grow our usage of renewables, but do it in a manner that’s almost backward to what would be intuitive, the more we develop here of solar, geothermal, wind and biomass, the more we will consume of it. It will drive the price up because every other state is passing laws that say you need to buy more of that. So we’re walking into a bit of a quagmire, but it’s the right kind of quagmire to be in. I think you’re going to see the renewable portfolio standard increase. I’m hoping we’re going to put some serious government investment dollars into the intellectual capacity at the universities to be matched by the private sector to develop different kinds of solar panel technology for purposes of having it built here and having it built with our intellect. One of the things that the car companies should be doing when they talk about getting the money from the Energy Department, it should be about energy, not just the car business. They’re just in the manufacturing of cars. When you give them the money to develop electric cars or hybrid cars, you really should be giving them money for the intellectual capital that should be married with the private sector to help us with easier ways to spot geothermal; quieter, smoother, more efficient fans for wind, ones that maybe aren’t 300 feet tall — it would be nice if they were a little smaller — ones for distributive generation that you and I could put on our houses and of course new solar technology. We’ve gone three or four generations of solar technologies that just change all the time. That’s great. The next one, the one that I believe we ought to put every egg that we can afford to put in is nanosolar. We already have a nanoprogram at UNR, and I believe when you look at what’s going on with that, pretty soon you’re going to have a dish the size of a petri dish that can take enough solar and deal with your house’s needs. That’s pretty exciting stuff. And that’s what you’re going to start seeing on the top of cars. The top or hood of your car is going to absorb a remarkable amount of solar.

How far away is that?

We think it’s a lot closer than people think it is. Silicon Valley is a unique place, and money flows there in unique ways. Right now, money hasn’t accelerated as much and has gone over to growing biodiesel in a petri dish. Now that is probably the most exciting thing that you will see coming out very quickly. When you can start to grow your fuel instead of drill for it, you will change the economy of the world forever. For those that are worried about the environment, you’ve basically fixed the problem because now you’ve gotten away from a carbon-based fuel to the one that is sustainable without an impact on the environment.

How about health care?

I guess I go back to where I started 30 years ago, which is when you have a state like Nevada and we abut a state like Utah and when you realize they’re the healthiest state in the country and we are the least healthy state in the country, part of it — if not most of it — is cultural. They don’t have gambling, the vast majority of the folks in Utah are not drinkers or smokers, and we do all of that. You can see why we have problems. There are those on the preventive side who want to try to get people to live healthier lifestyles. And then there are those on what I call the reality side, the ones going through the hospital with the heart attack and everything else. You’re going to have to marry those both. Very costly; very, very costly. I think what has to be done here is you have to decide what you can and what you can’t do and quit telling the public you can do it all, because you can’t. There isn’t enough money in this country or the world to do it all. You’ve got to decide what you can do and I think places like the Nevada Cancer Institute are focused and they’ve got private-sector money. We’ve helped a little bit, but they know what they’re doing. They’ve brought in the best people. I think that’s the kind of model we need: the Lou Ruvo (Brain Institute) model; the Whittemore Peterson (Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease, in Reno) model. I think these models are the new models. It’s back to your public-private partnership. They’re the new models for problem-solving, and I think that’s what we ought to concentrate on and quit trying to be all things and promise everything to every constituency group. We just can’t do it.

Corrections?

I think Howard Skolnik is right on when it comes to the Nevada State Prison. That is a wondrous facility in which I hope all those people who love movies can go to and make movies in it. But it is not a good place to house prisoners. It is extremely costly. It’s a unique facility. It’s 100 years old. It leaks. It does everything wrong, and I think his proposal to start rethinking the use of that facility long term is spot on. The fact is you have some people who work there who don’t want to move to Southern Nevada. Well, I can tell you if I were governor — and I think the next few governors are going to have to deal with the reality — are going to have to tell our very, very, very loyal and good friends in Carson City that most of the jobs are going to be in Clark County because that’s where the public is and that’s where the challenges are. Take it or leave it. People are going to have to understand if you want a job in your chosen field, the job’s going to be here. Period. That’s what you’ve got to solve. This would have been closed days ago if these guys would have been willing to move to other jobs, but they don’t want to leave their community. I can’t blame them. But it’s part of the realities of how we move as a society today. You know it. How many people who you interact with inside of the Greenspun Media Group have come and gone and come and gone and are moving all over the country? And they’re wonderful jobs. It’s just that you can’t put down too many roots if you like that kind of reporting or if you’re a specific kind of guy who does those kinds of jobs. It’s just part of the gig. It’s like a news anchor on TV. Sorry. What are there, eight of them in New York who get the big bucks and get to buy the big penthouse? The rest of them, every two years, are moving somewhere.

Do you expect the Legislature will be able to complete its work within its mandated time frame?

I do. I really do. I’ve talked to the governor, I’ve talked to the leadership and they all would like to get out a little early. We never do, because it’s the end game that you have to play this bill off of that bill. One of the things I want to alert my colleagues to is that it’s very important to understand that this is not about us, but the game is played like it is.

The people care about results. And here’s the problem you’re going to run into, and I’m going to be very specific as to personalities. You have a governor with a very low approval rating who has absolutely nothing to lose. This poor guy, between all his personal challenges and the state budget and everything, has absolutely nothing to lose. You have a speaker who’s been reported in multiple media outlets who would like to be governor. And you have a brand-new, first-ever, youngest majority leader with a huge future who, I predict, is going to be assistant or deputy secretary of labor under the new administration someday. And as I warned the majority leader, “When the call comes, it only comes once, so don’t think too hard, my friend.” So the majority leader gets caught in the middle of these two people. So the end game becomes, “Who can you hang with the did-we-drag-it-out-past-the-assumed-legislative-time moniker?” Can it be done? Of course it can. We could have done it in most of these sessions in half of the time, but we don’t for a lot of reasons. We have to remember why we’re there. Nobody will throw you out of office for leaving too early. But they will throw you out of office if you don’t do your job.

Because of term limits, this will be your last Senate term. What’s next for you politically?

Well, I promised myself and my wife that I wouldn’t really think too much about it until I’ve finished the job I was hired to do. There are a lot of opportunities out there. I’ve told everyone I can, “Please don’t come and talk to me until the session is over.” I want to get through this. I’m hoping there’s an opportunity out there that I haven’t even thought of. I love public policy. I always have. I don’t like politics very much. It’s become very personal and it shouldn’t be. It should never be personal, it should always be about the issue and not about the person. But I want to stay involved in public policy in some way. After 30 years, we’ve gotten to a really good place from which to leap. And I don’t want to miss that. I want to be helpful where I can and helpful to those that are holding elective office because I may not run for anything, and that’s OK. But I want to be helpful in the public policy arena. I’ve studied it too long and too hard to not do that and if I have to do that on the sidelines, that’s fine. I’ve had my “15 minutes of fame,” a lot longer than most people will get. When I’m done, I will have served longer in the state Senate than any other person except for one, and that’s Sen. (Bill) Raggio. And I didn’t realize that until the (Legislative Counsel Bureau) told me because of term limits and other things. But I was fortunate to serve with some remarkable individuals, including (former) Sen. (Joe) Neal who will always be an icon because of the barrier he broke when he came in. The speeches he used to make ... I used to just sit there with my jaw open going, “Oh wow, this was something.” I’ve served with a lot of terrific legislators. But the key is, can you take what you’ve learned and continue to give back with that experience? I’m hoping I can. And if there’s an opening and there’s a welcome mat out there, I’m going to try to do that. And if there’s not, I’ll just continue to do what I’m doing. If I’ve learned anything over time it’s putting good people in a room who may not always agree, but at the end of the day, they’ll find something that works to solve whatever challenge is in front of them. And we’re still small enough where we can do that. We still all have enough Nevada in us to be that kind of independent person who wants to solve the problem first, and we’re not really concerned about party politics and some of the other challenges that kind of get in the way of solving really important stuff. But if I leave the elected political arena, I want to leave something for my colleagues that hopefully every day they walk into those chambers or walk into a committee hearing that they remember and that is that it should always be about the issue, never about the person. I learned that from (former U.S. Sen.) Paul Laxalt. I saw a lot of that in (former President) Ronald Reagan. I see a tremendous amount of that in (Obama). We can have disagreements about anything, but at the end of the day, we need to walk out the door saying, “C’mon, are you hungry? Let’s get something to eat.” That’s what Nevadans are about. I don’t want to ever lose that. Not just me personally, but I don’t want Nevada to ever lose that. Because that’s one of the great character strengths we have. That’s why they can’t get anything done in California.