Clark County to get more seats in Nevada Legislature

By Cy Ryan

Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010 | 12:57 p.m.

CARSON CITY – If the Nevada Legislature remains at 63 members, the new population figures show Clark County will add one seat in both the Senate and Assembly.

Clark County now has 14 of the 21 positions in the Senate and 29 of the 42 in the Assembly.

Given that makeup, the rural counties would probably lose in the shift.

But the Nevada Constitution says the Legislature can have as many as 75 members.

The Constitution, says Lorne Malkiewich, director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau, provides the Assembly must at least be twice as large as the Senate but no more than three times as large.

After the 1980 census, the Legislature set the present number of members as 63. At present each Senate district represents about 94,000 residents and each Assembly District an estimated 47,000. Keeping the Legislature the present size will mean each Senate District will have 128,598 residents and Assembly District at 64,289 in the next election.

Dale Erquiaga, senior advisor to Gov.-elect Brian Sandoval, said he has not take a position yet on whether the Legislature should be expanded.

Sandoval feels “politics should not be a consideration” in dividing up the seats and his “primary goal is to see that all the seats represent the same number of people,” Erquiaga told a news conference.

Malkiewich said there are computers in Las Vegas and Carson City set aside for people to start drawing potential maps of the districts in the Senate and Assembly. The computer in Las Vegas is on the fourth floor of the Sawyer Building.

The census shows the rural counties are shrinking and the state is becoming more urban.

All the districts, even in Clark County, will have to be re-drawn given the shift in population, said Malkiewich.