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AP Photo, Cathleen Allison
Nevada Sen. Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, and retired Nevada state archivist Guy Rocha listen to testimony on Leslie’s proposal to strip the mining industry of eminent domain powers Monday, Feb. 14, 2011 at the Legislature in Carson City.
By Anjeanette Damon (contact) 
Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011 | 2 a.m.
Sun Archives
- Is low-taxes sales pitch enough to bring businesses to Nevada? (2-11-2011)
- Gaming, mining industries become early targets for taxes (2-8-2011)
- Don’t buy faux benevolence in tax debate (1-9-2011)
- Going after mining tax, despite the Harry Reid factor (1-17-2010)
- Democrats quash mining tax to bolster Reid’s reelection hopes (12-6-2009)
- Group pursuing initiative to raise taxes on gold mining (12-3-2009)
- Mining’s boom does little for Nevada’s bottom line (9-7-2008)
- Mining law reform considered in House (2-26-2009)
Sun Coverage
Mining and its special protections in state law have long been favorite targets of liberals and their allies in the Legislature. On Monday, state Sen. Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, fired the opening salvo in a renewed effort to chip away at the industry’s power — introducing a bill that strips mining companies of their power of eminent domain.
“What it comes down to is when or if you think a private corporate interest should have the right to acquire your personal property to further their private interest,” Leslie said. “That’s the key question.”
Leslie appears to have found traction in going after mining on an issue that not only resonates with the usual mining critics but with some Republican lawmakers.
In the first hearing on Senate Bill 86 Monday, Leslie was supported by a parade of environmental groups, professors and property owners who used increasingly dire superlatives — insane, abhorrent, grotesque — to describe mining’s right to seize property.
“Most people do not believe it’s possible they could lose their property to a beet factory, a smelter or mining company,” said Theo McCormick, who lives in the Comstock Historic District, which was saved from a mining company’s threatened use of eminent domain in the 1980s by an amendment to the law to protect historic sites.
“It would be awful to lose a home to a highway project or public building, but can you imagine having that property taken so a mining company could make a profit?”
Mining was granted its privileged status — including eminent domain powers typically reserved only for government itself — by 19th-century lawmakers when mining was the state’s most powerful industry and its sole economic engine.
With the industry again booming thanks to record gold prices, many have called Nevada’s regulation of the industry, including its constitutionally established tax rate, antiquated. It’s a fight that has grown in intensity with the state’s budget woes.
“This isn’t Senate Democrats coming after the mining industry,” veteran mining lobbyist Jim Wadhams said. “It’s an effort by Sheila Leslie and the eco-terrorists to produce an anti-mining bill. That’s the real issue. They want to take a shot at mining because they don’t like them.”
Utilities and cable television companies have eminent domain powers and they aren’t targeted by the bill, he said.
(Generally, those companies use their limited powers for property easements to run cables, not to completely condemn the land.)
But it wasn’t just Democrats gunning for miners Monday.
In brief but heated questioning, conservative freshman Sen. Michael Roberson, R-Las Vegas, said the mining industry decimated the landscape and the community near his hometown. “I grew up in a small mining town in Kansas and saw firsthand the devastation mining has on the land when they leave,” he said, noting the higher cancer rates and the nearby town that was “shut down” because the Environmental Protection Agency condemned it.
Roberson, who has signed a no-new-taxes pledge, launched into a line of questioning more reminiscent of the arguments behind the recent failed initiative petition to raise the mining tax.
He wanted to know what percentage of a mining company’s profits went toward the net proceeds mining tax and why international mining companies were investing those profits in Canada rather than Nevada.
The questions shocked both mining industry representatives and Democrats, who said they wouldn’t have pegged Roberson as a potential ally of those seeking to increase the net proceeds tax.
After the meeting, Roberson said he was “just asking questions,” but acknowledged he was frustrated by the slippery answers he received.
“I signed a pledge that I would not support a tax increase on the citizens of Nevada, period,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t raise a tax in one place and offset it with a cut somewhere else.”
Roberson may not be the only Republican ally Leslie finds. Assemblyman John Ellison of Elko, a strong supporter of the mining industry, said he opposes eminent domain powers, especially for private industry. “I would never vote in favor of eminent domain,” he said.
The crux of the mining industry’s argument against the bill is that it rarely uses eminent domain. A high-profile case in Elko County last year, in which a mining company began proceedings against a rancher, is what grabbed Leslie’s attention. That case was eventually settled at a profit for the landowner.
“If they rarely use it, then they won’t miss it,” said Assemblyman William Horne, D-Las Vegas, who introduced a similar bill in the Assembly.
But mining lobbyists also argued that ending their eminent domain powers would allow a single property owner to block a mining project and the creation of “many, many jobs” — jobs, the buzz word of the 2011 session.
Mining lobbyists began the day confident that SB86 was merely a grandstanding gesture by anti-mining interests. They ended the morning with a renewed effort to count noses thanks in part to Roberson’s outburst.
“That was shocking,” said Tim Crowley, president of the Nevada Mining Association. “We presented our case against the bill, now I guess we have to go assess its chances.”
The mining companies are getting top dollar for their products. Prices for gold and copper have never been this high. I am a pretty conservative guy and I think these mining companies have paid too little in mining taxes. Time to increase their taxes.
Eminent domain for profit should never be allowed it is nothing but legal theft.
RAISE TAXES ON MINING!!!
they strip the land...
destroy the land...
then ship the profits out of state...
out of country...
this is pure bull$#!^!!!
RAISE TAXES ON MINING!!!
these clowns that support mining...
clowns like our slippery greasy slimy phony smiling governor greasy brian...
want to screw the children of nevada...
in favor of foreign children...
in favor of australian children...
can you frickin believe it...
RAISE TAXES ON MINING!!!
"eco-terrorists"...
are you fickin kidding me pal???
hmmm???
you have got to be kidding???
right???
you can not be serious???
right???
you are joking right???
right???
if it's not a joke...
what the hell am i missing here???
don't terrorists destroy???
doesn't mining destroy the land???
how can noble brave legislators who want to protect the citizens of nevada from having their world turned upside down so that mining can destroy the land be called "eco-terrorists"???
how the hell does that make any sense???
how the hell is that possible???
help...
please help...
my brain is about to explode!!!
"Mining was granted its privileged status -- including eminent domain powers typically reserved only for government itself -- by 19th-century lawmakers when mining was the state's most powerful industry and its sole economic engine."
________
Nevada's budget has been cut to the bone while these global companies rely on 19th century laws and tax rates to loot our natural resources for next to nothing. Unbelieveable.
Do not raise any tax on mining ...With all the profit from mining put it one big bag and sell it and pay off what the what the BIG FAT DONKEYS have screwed up for all these years,Carson City -- Mining and its special protections in state law have long been favorite targets of liberals and their allies in the Legislature. On Monday, state Sen. Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, fired the opening salvo in a renewed effort to chip away at the industry's power -- introducing a bill that strips mining companies of their power of eminent domain.
hey edgar...
????????????????????????????????
Third world nations have better deals than Nevada has with mining firms. Unbelieveable...
Raise the taxes. Nevada needs the money badly. they make record profits now AND can afford it.
I have a question for Edgar on this one -
You say you don't want to raise taxes on mining, claiming that they themselves can/will somehow solve our budgetary woes. That's neat.
My question to you is, IF we do raise taxes on mining (one of the foreign companies just made a 64Billion dollar profit from selling one branch of its assets, by the way), do you think that they're going to leave the state?
Where will they go? The gold is in OUR GROUND! What? Are they going to plug in a straw from California or Utah? NO. These foreign entities will have to stay here and invest their money here. Right now, their profits leave our country and create jobs ELSEWHERE.
It's about time that Republicans and Democrats agreed on how wrong this really is. We support foreign companies ripping off Nevadans? Not in my state!
The time for having special interest groups protected in the state constitution has passed. Whether or not the actual taxes or rates are changed, no industry or group should be singled out for special treatment, good or bad.
Article 10, Section 5 of the Nevada Constitution should be repealed in its entirety with no replacement. Put mining on the same footing as any other business interest in this state.
Everyone one of us needs to be responsible citizens with equal rights under the law, and that includes corporate entities.
"What it comes down to is when or if you think a private corporate interest should have the right to acquire your personal property to further their private interest," Leslie said. "That's the key question."
And that's the key question the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2004's perversity Kelo v. City of New London.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Meantime there's this bit from that grand dame of the U.S. Supremes, Justice O'Connor:
"...the Court today significantly expands the meaning of public use. It holds that the sovereign may take private property currently put to ordinary private use, and give it over for new, ordinary private use, so long as the new use is predicted to generate some secondary benefit for the public--such as increased tax revenue, more jobs, maybe even aesthetic pleasure. . . . . Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result."