This time, Clark County tops state list for road projects

By J. Patrick Coolican (contact), Cy Ryan (contact)

Thursday, March 12, 2009 | 2 a.m.

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CARSON CITY — Clark County will receive a majority of transportation stimulus spending under a list of proposed projects the state Transportation Board will consider today.

The board will vote on $201 million in projects, 54 percent of which would be in Clark County. Fourteen percent of the money would be for projects in Washoe County and 32 percent would be divided among the state’s rural counties.

An earlier list of projects obtained by the Las Vegas Sun showed Clark County receiving only 15 percent of $140 million in discretionary transportation funding intended to get workers back on the job. (The remainder of the $201 million was directly allocated to local governments.)

Susan Martinovich, director of the Nevada Transportation Department, outlined the projects for lawmakers this week. While the Transportation Board must give final approval, the panel typically accepts the director’s recommendations.

The projects planned for Clark County include: landscaping U.S. Highway 95 between Martin Luther King and Rainbow boulevards at a cost of $9 million; repaving I-15 from the East Mesa Interchange to south of Mesquite for $14 million; repaving U.S. 95 from State Route 157 to State Route 156 at a cost of $26 million; and repaving I-15 from the California border to 17 miles north at a cost of $20 million.

The only Clark County project included on the department’s previous list was the I-15 repaving project at the California border.

Assemblyman Kelvin Atkinson, D-Las Vegas, noted that the list could still be modified by the Transportation Board, which is headed by Gov. Jim Gibbons. “The list doesn’t mean anything,” the chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee said. The governor “could change course” and “we don’t have the input we deserve.”

There has been disagreement over whether the department or lawmakers would have the final say on the project list. Martinovich said if the board makes big changes she will return to the Legislature for further discussion.

Kent Cooper, the Transportation Department’s deputy administrator, said the projects would all be out to bid by August. The first project — the paving of Interstate 80 west of the Rye Patch Interchange in Pershing County — will be put out to bid March 19 and construction should start in mid April.

Jacob Snow, general manager of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, said the changes to the project list increase the odds that local companies will bid on and get the work.

Under the federal stimulus, about $40 million went directly to the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada; $10 million went to Washoe County; and another $10 million was earmarked for rural areas and mass transit projects.

•••

We don’t have enough hunters, workers are dying and seniors are vanishing!

A quick tour of the Legislative Building Wednesday showed the scope of the august body’s work, which can range from pointless and dull, to obscure and arcane, to significant and profound.

First up, Assemblyman David Bobzien, D-Reno, testifies for his bill in the Natural Resources Committee that would allow a Nevadan who is 18 years old and has a hunting license to act as a supervising mentor to an apprentice hunter as young as 12.

The bill provides for an apprentice license for the youngster.

Bobzien said this is badly needed because we’re losing hunters. Nevada’s rate of “hunter recruitment” — that’s the NRA’s term — is 49th in the country. The current generation has just 30 percent as many hunters as the previous one.

This is a bad thing, apparently, but Bobzien’s hunter apprenticeship program will help fix it.

Nearby, in Senate Government Affairs, the room is crowded for a bill on bus turnouts, which would allow buses to leave the roadway to pick up their riders.

“Everything is a mess, and we’re doing bus turnouts,” quipped a lobbyist outside the room.

In Assembly Health and Human Services, they’re talking about a proposed “Silver Alert,” which would be like the “Amber Alert” for abducted children but for seniors who go missing. It’s called Statewide Alert System for the Safe Return of Missing Older Persons.

In Assembly Commerce and Labor, Stacey Escalante, a former TV reporter and a skin cancer survivor, is testifying remotely from Las Vegas on a bill to more strictly regulate tanning salons. She recounts growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, when pop culture “glamorized a deep, dark tan,” she said.

She would put a sun lamp on her face before big events growing up, and then started going to tanning salons.

Escalante urged the legislators to enact the bill and cautioned the public to be safe.

Yes, but what will happen to Nevada’s all-important tanning salon industry? The committee will have to work this balance.

In Senate Commerce and Labor, Sen. Maggie Carlton is hearing testimony about worker safety, in a do-over of a hearing she held last week, which labor leaders bizarrely skipped.

Senate Health and Education is hearing a bill on “cyber bullying.” Something must be done, says Sen. Valerie Wiener, the Las Vegas Democrat and main sponsor.

And no doubt the Legislature will do something.