MINUTES OF THE meeting
of the
ASSEMBLY Committee on Elections, Procedures, and Ethics
Seventy-Second Session
April 15, 2003
The Committee on Elections, Procedures, and Ethicswas called to order at 3:55 p.m., on Tuesday, April 15, 2003. Chairwoman Chris Giunchigliani presided in Room 3138 of the Legislative Building, Carson City, Nevada. Exhibit A is the Agenda. Exhibit B is the Guest List. All exhibits are available and on file at the Research Library of the Legislative Counsel Bureau.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:
Ms. Chris Giunchigliani, Chairwoman
Mr. Marcus Conklin, Vice Chairman
Mr. Bernie Anderson
Mr. Bob Beers
Mr. Chad Christensen
Mr. Tom Grady
Ms. Kathy McClain
Mr. Bob McCleary
Ms. Peggy Pierce
Ms. Valerie Weber
COMMITTEE MEMBERS ABSENT:
None
GUEST LEGISLATORS PRESENT:
Assemblyman Joe Hardy, District No. 20, Clark County
Assemblyman Lynn Hettrick, District No. 39, Douglas County
STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT:
Michelle Van Geel, Committee Policy Analyst
Kelly Fisher, Committee Secretary
OTHERS PRESENT:
Lorne Malkiewich, Director, Legislative Counsel Bureau
George Pyne, Executive Director, Public Employees Retirement System (PERS)
Dan Musgrove, Clark County
Bob McCune, President, Nevada Silver Haired Legislative Forum
Scott MacKenzie, Executive Director, State of Nevada Employees Association
Gary Wolff, Teamsters 14, Nevada Highway Patrol Association
Danny Coyle, President, State of Nevada Employees Association, AFSCME/Retirement Chapter
Debbie Cahill, Nevada State Education Association (NSEA)
Jim Richardson, Nevada Faculty Alliance
Marty Bibb, Retired Public Employees of Nevada (RPEN)
Woody Thorne, Public Employees Benefit Plan
Doug Bierman, City of Caliente, Eureka County, Lander County
Randy Robison, Executive Director, Nevada Association of School Boards
Janine Hansen, Nevada Committee for Full Statehood
Merritt (Ike) Yochum, Independent American Party
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
[Roll called] We will start with our hearing. We do have a 5:00 p.m. Floor Session, which we have to be down a little bit early for. I’m going to ask people to speak without being too redundant. We will open up the hearing on A.B. 542.
Assembly Bill 542: Makes various changes relating to operation of Legislature and Legislative Counsel Bureau. (BDR 17-1024)
Lorne Malkiewich, Director, Legislative Counsel Bureau (LCB):
[Introduced himself] A.B. 542 is what we call the LCB generic bill. Instead of putting in 5 or 6 bills making minor changes relating to the Counsel Bureau, we just combine them all into a single bill.
I have provided to you an explanation of A.B. 542 (Exhibit C), including a summary of the substantive changes and then a section-by-section review of the bill. I want to make it clear that these changes are totally severable. If you like 7 of the 13, 10 of the 13, 12 of the 13, you can pass whichever ones you want, take out the ones you don’t want, or add additional ones. In fact, this is so easy to amend, I’m going to suggest two amendments while I’m testifying.
What I will briefly do, because I know you are short of time, is just go through the changes. What we’re doing with the first four sections is cleaning up some of the deadlines. There’s a provision that says if there is no other deadline, then December 15 applies, and it’s not clear whether things are subject to that deadline or not. So we’re taking that out and putting in specific deadlines, particularly the areas where we missed where there’s one for local government agencies and associations that were overlooked. For chairs of standing committees that request bills in the interim, this clarifies that when the election hits you switch over to the new chairs for that, so you don’t have someone requesting bills after the general election and then specifying deadlines after that.
The second one is a little more detailed and deals primarily with local government fiscal notes. There was a concern raised as to whether there’s any impact on printing. There is none. We would continue to print the local government fiscal notes. What we don’t want to do is send out fiscal notes on 300 bills just because somewhere in the bill it says, “This is a misdemeanor.” On bills like that, you would just put on there that it has the possibility of increasing or newly providing for a term of imprisonment to the county or city jail or detention facility. If one had a substantial fiscal note, that would be noted for that bill. Procedure has all of the local governments submitting a note within 8 working days or calendar days. After they receive the fiscal note, then everything that is received within that period would be included in the note, printed, and put online. I think you know our fiscal note system is online, and you can see the fiscal notes right with the bills.
[Mr. Malkiewich, continued] The third one allowed pre-filing by standing committees. You can individually prefile, but if we have a bunch of bills from an interim committee or state agencies or local governments, we can’t prefile them. We don’t have that authority. This would allow the person designated as chair to prefile the bills.
We’d like to eliminate the requirement that we print 100 copies of the journals. If we have 10, we probably have more than we need. The bound journals at the end of session, I’ve worked with the Chief Clerk and the Secretary on how many we need. There is certainly no need for 100.
We have a petty cash account in the Legislative Police Office. It’s going to fluctuate in value. We’ve paid out a lot of petty cash claims. It might be very low. If the gift shop needs petty cash, they’re out of luck. So we’d like to establish one for our gift shop.
Right now we maintain a directory of state and local government and the Legislative Manual. The day after it is printed, we get notified of a change, and it’s out of date that quickly. We would like to do this online. We’d like to not have the requirement in the statute that we print a directory of state government.
Number 7 eliminated the Director as the Nevada Legislative Federal-State Coordinator. That was put in by one of my predecessors, and there’s really no reason to put it in statute. What this is referring to is the NCSL [National Conference of State Legislatures] position. Leadership can designate that. If they want to designate me, I can. If they want to designate their secretary or somebody else to do that, they certainly can.
[Mr. Malkiewich, continued] Number 8 is the one I’m proposing an amendment to, and I’m hoping you have a copy of the proposed amendment (Exhibit D). The problem we have is non-paid lobbyists often don’t show up here. They’re here once every three months, and if they forget to file their reports, it’s a $10‑a-day fee. Someone who’s paying $15 for a license is being charged a several hundred-dollar fee because they didn’t realize they didn’t have to file their form, even though we say it 10 times in the report and on the forms and everything like that. At first I was proposing saying that we wouldn’t make them file. I think a better approach is to say that for non-paid lobbyists, there isn’t a fine, that if they don’t file, we can still revoke their license for not filing on time, and we’d still warn them, but not have a non-paid lobbyist pay the fine. You could go either way on that. We could put in something that says that non-paid lobbyists don’t have to file. The problem with that is that you don’t know if it’s that they didn’t file because they forgot and really spent $10,000 last month, or because they had no expenditures. This way, by just not having a fee for them for late filing, you would still get the reports every month.
Number 9 is allowing the Legislative Counsel to make name changes when codifying NRS [Nevada Revised Statutes] if it’s incorrectly written, or if you’re in codification combining sections, you need to put a definition in. If you have powers transferred from one agency to another, and one bill doesn’t pick that up, we could change that in codification.
The tenth change is similar. It’s for when we delete a provision and readopt it. There’s a bill this session on Chapter 62 of NRS. It’s a huge bill that redoes the juvenile code. A lot of provisions are being repealed and readopted as Chapter 62A and 62B. If the statute is just being readopted in its entirety with no change, what we want is for the interpretation to go along with that section. That’s the change number 10 provides.
[Mr. Malkiewich, continued] Change 11, I’m sure, will be Mr. Anderson’s favorite, amending the preliminary chapter, his favorite chapter, and his favorite section, the section on flush lines and shall, must, may, and all that stuff to put in a symbol for flush lines. First we explained flush lines, and we were exceptionally cute about this. We explained flush lines in a section using a flush line, and we now have put a symbol in the bill to show what the symbol would look like.
Change number 12 concerns the Public Employees Retirement System. You should also have a separate testimony from Claire Clift that I provided to you on this (Exhibit E). The idea here is to provide that if someone just works during session, that they would get credit for a full year for the purposes of vesting. In the past, vesting was 10 years in the Public Employees Retirement System. Someone who worked in session for 6 months would have to work 40 years to get enough service credit to vest. Of course, they just said, “No, we’re just going to cash in our credit.” Even with it at 5 years, it would take 10 sessions, or 20 years, to vest. The idea here is if you just work for the sessions for those 6 months that you get credit for a full year of service solely for the purpose of vesting. If you worked 5 sessions, you could vest. There are also provisions at the end of the bill allowing you to go back, get your benefit recalculated, redeposit your contributions if you pulled them out, and have PERS compute the benefit. Although the benefit would still be fairly small, because you’re just working 6 months every couple of years, you would be able to vest in the system.
This is the second amendment that I proposed. There is concern raised that perhaps that if you worked the other 6 months in another qualified job, would this mean you would get a year and a half. We’d just like to put something in making it very clear that in no event should this section be interpreted to have someone accrue more than one year of credit towards vesting in a year. If you work more than 6 months, it’s still going to be no more than one year.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
The 6 months, because of the 120 days, is that because you’re counting front end and back end, because there’s a start and ending time?
Lorne Malkiewich:
Yes. Generally, the people who work full time for session will work more than 6 months. There are a few who will work less, but that’s tied into the requirements for the retirement system. If your job is such that you only work 5 months, you don’t contribute to the retirement system.
Finally, the last provision is eliminating the requirement that the Counsel Bureau provides staff for the Silver Haired Legislative Forum. We have provided a great deal of staffing for this committee in the past, and I know it was very helpful to the committee. We were hoping that it would be self-sufficient in the future. At this point, we have to make some decisions. There’s a bill you’re going to have on general file tomorrow that takes away the limits and the number of times that the Silver Haired Forum can meet in the interim, so they could meet once a month throughout the interim. You’re also going to have a bill introduced from the Senate setting up a commission on another statutory committee that we will be staffing. We have to make some choices. We are not seeking any new positions in the Research Division or the Legal Division to staff these, and we had some employees, some secretaries, particularly in the Research Division, about ready to drop at the end of last interim from the workload. That’s why we’re proposing this. If we are going to have choices on what we’re staffing and what we’re not, then we think perhaps this is one we should consider dropping.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Let me ask you about the bill that you mentioned that’s downstairs. Is there a fiscal note on it for expansion?
Lorne Malkiewich:
I don’t believe so. I think we maybe should have put one in.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
At least for purposes, and that might help with the discussion either on this section or that section, so at least the Legislative Commission, if that’s the direction they wish to go, budgets or allocates some funding for it. I do understand the impact on your staff. Maybe it’s time that we review how that’s supported. That might be helpful for that part of it.
Lorne Malkiewich:
That covers the 13 changes. I was not going to go through section by section, I know you’re pressed for time, but if there are any questions concerning any section of the bill or any of the substantive provisions, I’d be glad to answer them.
Assemblyman Anderson:
It was when I was a freshman when I got that bill that flushed to left, so I know I’ve been here too long now that it’s going to be changed. Are you going to take the 6-month salary and amortize it over the full year in computing this? Is that how they’re going to do it? The salary might be dramatically higher during those 6 months than they are. If somebody worked in another state job for 10 years, and now they worked here for 10 years on a 6-month basis, how are you going to mix those two time factors?
Lorne Malkiewich:
There are some people here from the Public Employees Retirement System, so I urge them to rush forward if I go too far astray. I don’t believe this would affect benefits. This is just vesting, so like a part-time employee who works 5 years half-time is going to get a benefit based on basically two and a half years of service. Your benefit would still be that much lower. You’re not going to get a year’s worth of credit or salary imputed, but you would at least be entitled to a benefit. I’ll let George Pyne tell you what the real answer is.
George Pyne, Executive Director, Public Employees Retirement System:
[Introduced himself] Mr. Malkiewich is correct. This is not going to impact the benefit that these folks receive. This law change really just affects their ability to vest, that is, to earn a benefit sooner rather than later, if you will. When we go in and calculate their average wage for benefit purposes, the months in which they don’t have any pay received, because they are not actually earning service credit in the plan, would be sort of overlooked for the purposes of determining their average wage so that it would not adversely impact them.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. Are there further questions from the Committee? [There were none.] So those are Claire’s [Clift] amendments that she had suggested regarding the vesting part of it. Then we have our analysis. We will look into the issue of the Silver Haired support personnel, because currently it’s just designated by your counsel through the LCB.
Lorne Malkiewich:
That’s correct. I believe we provide secretarial for that, as well. We provide a research analyst working a good amount of time on it and secretarial services for when they meet.
Assemblyman McClain:
Are there any other committees like this one that you support?
Lorne Malkiewich:
I don’t believe so. I think this is the only non-legislative committee. You could draw some analogies, like there are some mixed committees where you have members of the Legislative Branch, although it is really a committee dominated by the Executive Branch, where we will provide some services. We’re not primarily responsible for staffing. The closest thing to this is the Task Force on Tax Policy last interim. We sort of staffed that one, as well.
Assemblywoman McClain:
I’m just a little concerned about cutting these guys off at the throat, because they haven’t been in existence that long. They’re doing good work, and I don’t think that they really use that much staff time. I’d hate to see their support just go down the drain.
Loren Malkiewich:
Again, the changes are totally severable. It’s just an issue we wanted to bring to you, because it was something that was impacting our staff. Our understanding was that the Forum was trying to raise money, that they had a fund-raising committee, and the goal was to raise money to allow them to be a little more self-sufficient.
Assemblywoman McClain:
I think you’re correct. They did have a committee going. Maybe we could ask Mr. McCune, because I don’t know if they ever raised any money. I guess that’s my other part about this. You guys are a structure that is set up. How do they go about hiring a secretary? They don’t have offices. I don’t quite know what they would do down the road if we do this.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
That is part of the concern. We created many committees, but then we don’t give them the financing to go along with it. At least this brings it to our attention. As I said, if we’re considering a bill on the floor to expand the number of meetings, then we ought to have a fiscal note on it, as far as that’s concerned, and take a look at that part of it. I did scare the heck out of Lorne when I suggested that the Committee will consider looking into adding into this bill our own amendment to eliminate all standing committees as it is anyway, or at least put a sunset on all of them, so that we can have the discussion next session on which ones need to continue and which ones won’t. We may still take that up in this Committee as well, because it would fit here.
Lorne, could you provide for our Committee, and no rush on it, if you look back at Section 2, just because we have enough new ones, you know how you did that list for me of who all gets to request what number of bills, which organizations and so forth, so they could just have a chart of that? I think that might help the Committee members see who all gets how many based on what timeline.
Lorne Malkiewich:
We will print out that treatise for you.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Okay. Could you get me a list of the 26 committees that you gave me, or however many there are, the standing committees that we have as well?
Lorne Malkiewich:
The current statutory committees? Okay.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. Are there any further questions from the Committee? [There were none.] Thank you very much. I appreciate your brevity, which is pretty good for an attorney. Is there anyone else who wishes to testify for A.B. 542?
Dan Musgrove, Clark County:
[Introduced himself] I had the opportunity to speak to Lorne prior to the meeting. A couple of our concerns were addressed. I just want to make sure that it’s clear, at least in the legislative intent, or maybe we need to work on some of the wording regarding the fiscal note sections—Sections 5, 9, and 11—that it doesn’t preclude local governments from being notified of those bills that the LCB has identified as impacting us regarding the misdemeanors or increased jail time.
I know their problem is a lot of governments aren’t responding to those, and they can easily identify the fact that yes, we know, LCB knows, that a sentence would be increased and could, therefore, increase jail time. I think we still need the opportunity to at least be able to present that information to the Committee at the time when the bill is heard and be prepared to do that with the proper statistics. Those would be our concerns, that we still have the notification, that it does not preclude us from getting that information, and that the committees aren’t given the information as to what might affect us. That would be our only concern with the language as it is written.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
So it’s Sections 5—
Dan Musgrove:
[Sections] 5, 9, and 11, I believe, are the ones that deal with the fiscal notes.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Oh, I see. They took out the old language. Thank you very much, Dan.
Bob McCune, President, Nevada Silver Haired Legislative Forum:
[Introduced himself] I’m here to ask the Committee to consider deleting Section 22 of the bill. I’ll give you a few reasons why in a moment. I did send an e-mail to all the members of the Committee, and I hope you had a chance to read it (Exhibit F).
I would also like to take issue with the language in Section 13 for a number of reasons. One, the 21 members of the Forum are all appointed by Senators with your, in some of your cases, agreement. I can assure this Committee that people like Bonnie Bryan, Harriet Truedale, Thelma Clark, and others do not want to spend a lot of time having meetings. Where we discovered a gap was that when we completed our report, which I learned to my unhappiness was only sent to the Legislative Commission instead of all members of the Legislature, it shows the work that we did in just four meetings, public hearings, and the recommendations on 22 concerns that we have on behalf of the elderly residents of the state of Nevada.
[Mr. McCune, continued] The reason we exist, and the reason we were created, was to give the elderly of this state a direct link up through public hearings with the Legislature, because all the other groups were all doing well and trying hard, and some of the people felt that they weren’t protected when they come to hearings. I can assure you that the law said we can only meet four times between sessions, and that was acceptable, because we completed the hearings and we completed the report. I’ll be glad to leave this with the staff in case any of you have questions of why we exist.
We had a situation evolve where several members of the Legislature wanted to pursue a couple of our recommendations and wondered if we had a meeting of the group coming up that they could meet with and get a firsthand insight. Unfortunately, that wasn’t permitted and not the case. I don’t think our financial load has been that heavy, but I’m not in that seat so I can only speak from my seat. We received an appropriation of $5,000 from the Senate in the last session. We did go out and raise $1,500. Sprint contributed $1,500 to our efforts. The rest of the 21 members were all volunteers. We all have other things to do for the most part. I think this thing can be handled without a cut across the throat, because we can use teleconferencing, for example, and save some travel money. As those of you who know better than I do, it was hard raising money in this last campaign, because there wasn’t a lot of money out there. The same problem exists with us in trying to get folks to help out. This simply is a thing to be sure that the Legislature hears firsthand via the committee some of the things that they ought to look at without any adulteration of views, just plain hard facts.
We have some of the best witnesses in the state participate in this gathering, and I will close with the hope that we can continue, because I don’t think the quality of people that we have on the committee are going to be very happy and want to mail out meeting notices and take minutes, doing those kinds of things. These are pretty competent people. I don’t think we abuse the meeting process. We’ve just found ourselves having identified some problems and suddenly being put on the shelf, and we’ve got to wait now until after this session where we can begin to meet again. We’re not looking to meet every month, because I couldn’t get them together if I tried. Three or four times a year is doing pretty well with these busy people. We’d like to have the Committee look at maybe deleting that or at least revising it somewhat so that it’s not, as I said in my emotional e-mail, the death knell of the group, because I view that a lot of them would not want that role under those conditions.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think the issue is trying to find you the support that you need in order to be successful, because it has worked quite well, and I don’t think anyone has argued otherwise. What is the bill number of the bill on the Floor? A.B. 349. Did that come from Silver Hair?
Bob McCune:
I believe the bill was introduced by Assemblywoman Ohrenschall. I’m not sure, but I think Thelma Clark had gone to her and explained the need. We are kind of unavailable, if you will, until between the July deadline date for the report last year and next June.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
That was what they were trying to actually do.
Bob McCune:
We can’t hold a meeting. Even if someone wanted them to have a hearing, we’d have to get some waiver to do that, because the law was quite specific.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Maybe one thing we might ask of Mr. Malkiewich: If you were to compose a fiscal note, take a look at both how to maintain them currently if we were to remove Section 22, or if we were to deal with the bill on the Floor. At least we’d know what the dollar amount impact might be so we could make sure that they’re functioning and being successful instead of not being able to be successful.
Bob McCune:
As a quick aside, we’re also affiliated with the National Silver Haired Congress, which is leading the fight in Washington for Medicare and the pharmaceutical benefits. We need to keep that connection up with them and give them the kind of information that we have here in Nevada relative to our point of view. If the Nevada Senior Rx Program is going south, as I read in the paper, we’re going to have to work harder to get Medicare to stand up and come to bat.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Are there members of AARP also on Silver Haired Commission or on your board?
Bob McCune:
They monitor, and we interact, but we try to keep to ourselves. As we viewed what the Legislature wanted, it was not to have a lot of adulteration of this view and that view. We support in this recommendation all of the things that I think this Legislature does: certainly, pharmaceutical assistance of the economically deprived elderly residents here in Nevada.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
It’s more of an independent voice, and I think that was the legislative intent.
Bob McCune:
There are a lot of people out there, and the baby boomers are coming. I believe you can get some service and resolve from a committee like this.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. We do appreciate your getting hold of us as quickly as you did. Is there anyone else who wishes to testify on A.B. 542, either for or against? [There were none] We will close the hearing on A.B. 542, and we will open the hearing on A.C.R. 10.
Assembly Concurrent Resolution 10: Directs Legislative Commission to conduct interim study of operations of Public Employees’ Benefits Program. (BDR R-1111)
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
This is my bill. If I might, I’ll just introduce it. Basically, the intent of A.C.R. 10 was with the whole issue of retiree health insurance, let alone state employee health insurance, let alone public employee health insurance. We felt that it was an appropriate time to take a look at maybe venturing into a new viewpoint. The whole intent is over the interim, to have more of your technical people actually working on it rather than that many legislators working on it, to try to make sure that we involved all the unions, looked at contracts, and looked at local government needs to see if maybe if it’s time to work ourselves into a statewide health plan for all public employees regardless of where your work service was. I think that’s the genesis of it.
I know that there’s some language that needs to be added, and I’m welcome to any ideas and structuring. I see this is a major working group rather than, at this point, a total policy group. I have had local governments contact me and say they are interested. Even though they’re healthy right now, they realize that in the next 5 to 7 years their employees will be hitting about where our state employee age is at, and they are going to have an inversion as far as active to retiree. We’re all in public service. I’m speaking as a public employee. Let’s not pit each other against each other. Let’s figure out if we can get a better dollar, a better bang for our buck, and improve our buying power as far as a statewide consortium to some extent. That’s my introduction to it, and I’ll see who wants to come up to the table and testify.
Scott MacKenzie, Executive Director, State of Nevada Employees Association, SNEA/AFSCME, Local 4041:
[Introduced himself] We are in support of A.C.R. 10. We view this as an opportunity to take a long-term view of health insurance in general and all the components that make up what health insurance is. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been running around putting out fires between non-state retirees and state retirees and commingling and various issues that come up that we view as short-term fixes and not really having any long-term benefits or solutions. We think all of this needs to be looked at.
I became Executive Director of SNEA in August of 2001, and I can tell you no other issue has caused our phones to ring and our fax machines to work and our e-mails to work more than the issue of health insurance. State workers received a four plus four raise out of the last legislative session. Quite a bit of that raise went to sustain their health insurance costs, and at the same time, benefits were being cut.
As you know, state workers do not have collective bargaining, so we’re in a system where we’re in the Legislature trying to defend our rights under the health insurance, and we’re also working with the PEB [Public Employee Benefits] Board. The PEB Board has been faced with extremely difficult decisions, because they’re in a universe where they’re trying to figure out what the best combination of numbers are in Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, and all of it is bad. It’s all coming up bad because of bad performance and the increase in drug costs. Those are good folks trying to do the right thing, and it’s very difficult to make some of those decisions.
We believe this is an opportunity to think outside of the box, to take a real close look at what’s going on here. Are we getting the best bang for our buck? Is the market leveraging the fund, or is there a better way to do this where we can actually get more for our dollar? We think that with 125,000 public employees in this state, there is a lot of opportunity to make changes. We think that possibly putting a buying consortium together for pharmaceuticals, which, by the way, is happening in various areas of the country where various states are getting together and already doing that, like Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, those various states. We think it’s a very smart idea. Our research shows that this is really the only direction to go if we want to have affordable health care and not lose any benefits.
[Mr. MacKenzie, continued] We also know it’s going to be extremely difficult to work with some of the cities and counties because they have collective bargaining agreements, and we think that having a study at this time is the smart way to go about it, because each fund in turn is going to have its own individual problems, and it opens up the debate and the discussion for trying to figure out an equitable solution.
We are in support of this, and we look forward to being part of the process. Thank you very much.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you very much. I’m envisioning how we did the original 353 or 253 Committee or the Tax Committee. Mr. Grady probably remembers how that was somewhat structured. It’s so we can actually have various working groups rather than legislators. I think we need to be the sounding board for the policy, but there are just so many different areas that we need to take a look at, but we need to capitalize on it now. I appreciate it, and if you have any language to eventually get to us, I know I’ve received some from other groups. I’m just sticking them in a file, and then I’ll bring them out to the Committee and the audience all at one time. We can do this during work session. Thank you. Are there any questions for Mr. MacKenzie from the Committee?
Assemblywoman McClain:
It’s not for anybody in particular, but when he was talking about collective bargaining, I notice in one of these “whereases” it says, “Many employees are covered under collective bargaining agreements which need to be changed.” I don’t think we want to say that in this resolution.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
They will need to be changed if a statewide public employee insurance plan is created.
Assemblywoman McClain:
My point is that maybe what we need to look at all the different plans that every has, and instead of going at it from the approach of employee collective bargaining, it’s who has been able to do the best job here, and not assume that we’re all just going to rise to the top of the public employees’ benefits. Do you know what I’m saying?
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Yes, I do. I think the interpretation in the collective bargaining agreements are usually the actual dollar amount that’s contributed and how it’s allocated. That would need to be reviewed and changed if there was to be a contribution made into a fund. I think that’s the only issue that I was really addressing.
Assemblywoman McClain:
Then I think we need to state that a little more specifically.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Okay. We can massage that language.
Gary Wolff, Teamsters 14, Nevada Highway Patrol Association:
[Introduced himself] I, like Scott MacKenzie, probably get more phone calls and e-mails than I think some of you have been getting over the grave concerns of this state medical program. I’m here to tell you I fully support this resolution to study the existing program and see what can be done to fix it. We stand here to be part of the solution to assist in any manner we can. My members are not happy with what’s going on. There are some well-meaning, very hard-working people over there. It’s not working, Madam Chair. Thank you.
Danny Coyle, President, State of Nevada Employees Association, AFSCME/Retirement Chapter:
[Introduced himself] I support A.C.R. 10 wholeheartedly. The study is not only needed, it’s imperative. Most Americans, except for the very wealthy, are virtual slaves to those who underwrite our health care. The people who comprise this committee must work diligently, and they must work hard, and they must work fast in order to put forth some proposals that can be acted on by the next session of the Legislature and the final report for the ensuring Legislature.
Our organization stands ready to help and assist this Committee, the committee that is eventually appointed, and the Legislative Commission in any way we possibly can now and in the future. That’s all I have to say, and I’d be happy to answer any questions.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Are there any questions for Mr. Coyle? [There were none.] Thank you very much, Danny. I appreciate it.
Debbie Cahill, Nevada State Education Association:
[Introduced herself] I don’t want to repeat what has already been said, but pledge that we would be actively involved in this type of study. We do think it would be worthwhile. We stand in support of A.C.R. 10. Thank you.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. Debbie, in addition, one came up on A.B. 388, and I have to seize these when I’m having pre-senior moments. Could you double check the language in that bill that might preclude you from participating at some point in a statewide trust? Someone came to me, and I have not located the language yet specifically, but said that you can only opt in and not out, and that might prevent you if over the interim the recommendation comes back where you want to may need some statutory changes. Would you mind reviewing that language in the bill?
Debbie Cahill:
We have looked at that language, and we believe the reason we addressed that in the bill was for people who would be involved in a rural health care trust for education employees. We believe that the bill is enabling legislation that would give us the opportunity to create such a health trust, and that at the time that an opportunity might be available to opt into a statewide system, that we would have the ability to do that. We don’t think the legislation would restrict it.
Assemblyman Anderson:
If such a trust were set up, would there be the dual opportunity to have more than one set of employees into it, or do you envision it as only open to education personnel only? You have many of the smaller municipal and county governments, and even school administrators, who wanted into this program initially.
Debbie Cahill:
A.B. 388 is enabling legislation that would allow multi-employer health trusts. We have begun to explore putting together such a health trust that would be for education employees with the specific emphasis being that it would be the employer and the employee associations that represent the employees that would work together to create that health trust. We have not explored expanding that to other employee groups, but this enabling legislation would not preclude that from happening in the future.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. That would lend itself to what we’re trying to talk about here.
Jim Richardson, Nevada Faculty Alliance:
[Introduced himself] We support A.C.R. 10. It’s obvious that the health plan needs to be reviewed for lots of reasons. You are trying to address some of the problems that have arisen in several bills that you are considering this session having to do with non-state public employers and their retirees. Hopefully, those problems can be resolved on the short term, but in the long term we do need to look at the big picture.
It’s worth noting that Nevada is a very small part of the health care situation in this country, and we’re trying to figure out the best defensive posture to adopt in the face of extremely high medical inflation. That’s compounded, of course, by the utilization rates that have occurred recently simply because of the demographic makeup of state employee groups. We wholeheartedly support this and would pledge to cooperate any way we could with the study.
Just for the record, since I noticed there were several new members of the Assembly here, I would point out that the very first paragraph, the very first “whereas,” is a little bit misleading, because it does not reflect the fact that the Public Employees Benefits Program was a replacement for a program that has existed for a very long time in this state. The long history of that development is actually germane to what the intent of A.C.R. 10 would be. I will not try to recount that history at this late hour today, but I do think it’s germane and would suggest that maybe a little rewording there would be more reflective of the actual history of this important program. Thank you for the chance to testify.
Marty Bibb, Retired Public Employees of Nevada:
[Introduced himself] We’re a group that represents all sorts of retired public employees—state, city, county, school district, police, fire, and a range of other groups covered under PERS.
We support this resolution and appreciate your efforts in getting it drafted, Madam Chair, to investigate the state health plan on a variety of angles and for many reasons. To our knowledge, it’s the first full study of this group insurance topic since 1987 when it was a study that was created for the former committee on benefits, I believe, Dr. Richardson was referring to. It’s been many years, and certainly it is high time to get on with another study in light of all the various measures that are before this Legislature.
Additionally, we note that it’s a great time to do it, because this is a phenomenon appearing in a lot of other venues. We know specifically in California, whereas just a few years ago CALPERS seemed to have a fairly stable program. They, too, have experienced a diminishing number of options in their plans because of the groundswell of health care costs increase in recent years.
Specifically, to the resolution itself, we’d like to at least speak very briefly on the advisory committee. We think that makes great sense, because it’s designed to bring in representatives of employee organizations to sit on this advisory group along with the legislators who are outlined in the measure as well. We think that those employee organizations represented in that advisory capacity should include those representing both active as well as retired public employees, because both have a particular perspective relative to the numbers of folks that are indicated on the front page of this resolution. Those are our remarks, Madam Chair. If there are any questions, we’d be happy to try to respond to them. We appreciate your support of this measure.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. We’ll definitely make a note of that, because it should be both representatives.
Woody Thorne, Public Employees Benefit Plan (PEB):
I’m here to express the support of the PEB Board for A.C.R. 10. At his meeting on April 3, they proposed amendments to expand the scope of the interim study by a number of items. I wholeheartedly support the concept of what you’re trying to do here.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Again, Woody, if there’s any language that we may need to include to make sure that there’s representation, if you could get back to me I’d appreciate it. Thank you.
Doug Bierman, City of Caliente, Eureka County, Lander County:
[Introduced himself] I appreciate the comments of Mr. Bibb and his testimony, especially as they are focused on the membership of the advisory committee. We were encouraged to hear your introduction of the resolution this afternoon and the intent of including all groups. We would hope that the current language does not exclude retirees and/or non-state active members as well, so that it is indeed an all-inclusive body. Thank you very much.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments. We will close the hearing on A.C.R. 10. We would like to take up A.J.R. 6.
Assembly Joint Resolution 6: Urges Congress to increase payments in lieu of taxes and make certain other reparations for detrimental effects of federally held lands in Nevada. (BDR R-810)
Assemblyman Joe Hardy, District 20, Clark County:
[Introduced himself] I am here to present A.J.R. 6. I have included in your packets several things. The cover would read, “Sale of State School Trust Lands,” and within that same packet is the APPLE [Action Plan for Public Lands and Education] Initiative (Exhibit G), which probably will hear in A.J.R. 5. They are so closely related, that it will be deja vu all over again when it finally happens.
The genesis of A.J.R. 6 came about when I was considering how we could fund education in the state of Nevada. Traditionally, we use property tax to fund education. When I started looking into the property issue, I realized that 87 percent of land in Nevada is owned or controlled by the federal government. We are the 7th largest state geographically, we are the 35th in population, and we are 47th in getting money back from the federal government. Those numbers do not work well in funding education.
In 1976, the federal government magnanimously passed an act that allowed for payment in lieu of taxes to come back to the state that is federally owned. The PILT, or payment in lieu of taxes as it’s called, is about two-thirds of what it’s allowed that we actually get and about one-eighth as much money as would be generated by property tax if it were privately held.
We had a resolution in 1999 in this Legislature to ask the federal government to step up and fully fund payment in lieu of taxes, or PILT. That was S.J.R. 1 from the 1999 Legislative Session. Last year, we received $10.9 million total in all of the counties combined for PILT payments. If you look at 87 percent of the land and getting $10.9 million in property tax for that, you see that we were going to come up far short of what we needed.
As I was asking around and realizing that we need some motivation for the federal government to step up and be involved with this, realizing that they may have a problem with trying to give us money directly, I started looking at what resources we have in the state of Nevada. One of those resources is a piece of land—1,350 square miles—called Nevada Test Site, surrounded by another total land mass of 5,450 square miles. That land has been appropriated by the federal government and is a piece of land that we will never have, nor do we want that piece of land, as it, proverbially speaking, would glow in the dark.
[Mr. Hardy, continued] Underneath that land there are aquifers. There are at least three aquifers, and water goes downhill. Downhill water is going towards Death Valley, and in many years, it will be more appropriately named as that water that is radioactively contaminated goes at 1.3 miles every 30 years.
When we started looking at the land and the water that we will not be able to ever access appropriately or safely, we would like land and/or water or reparations for the contamination that Nevada Test Site has had. Nevada Test Site has at least 300 million curies of radiation underground that has been contaminated that we will never be able to clean up. Inasmuch as we will never be able to clean that up, and inasmuch as we can’t redeem that land or water, we would like land or water to recompense us, the state of Nevada, for that. That’s what this bill is doing. It is asking the federal government to look at reparations for the state of Nevada.
The meat of the bill is on page 4 under the “resolve.” This is a resolution to the federal government. We would like to authorize the transfer of land in number 1, on lines 27 through 31. We would like to have the federal government provide land of the same amount received by the states that have received four sections of land for the benefit of common schools upon admission to statehood. I will refer to A.J.R. 5, which you will hear, which is included in your APPLE Initiative that’s in your handout (Exhibit G).
That explanation goes back to when Nevada became a state, we had two parcels of land. We took one of those parcels of land and parlayed it into better land. We went from 3.9 million acres to less than 2 million acres, and then the states that came after us got twice as much land as we did. In fact, it ended up being four times as much land, because they didn’t have to bargain for better places to put their land. We were short-changed there.
In number 2, line 32, we would also like either (a) or (b), (a) being permanent funding for payment in lieu of taxes so that it does not come up to an appropriations bill every year; or (b), we would like the appropriation for distribution to be a sufficient amount to provide for the entire amount of payments according to their statutory formula.
Number 3, we would like an amount of land equal to those that counties and other local governments that would be able to collect in property taxes if the land was given to us by the federal government, and we privately held it. We are basically looking for land or the opportunity to fully fund the formulas that they already have.
Number 4, which is on page 5, line 3, authorizes the transfer of an additional 5,470 square miles of land in Nevada and any water rights appurtenant thereto from the federal government to the state of Nevada. There are some potentially interesting words on lines 6 through 8, which I am amenable to remove at the pleasure of the Committee, but to fairly compensate Nevada on lines 8 through 11, to further compensate Nevada for the land thus lost. In (b), the other option for number 4 would be to recompense us for any detrimental effects to the land and to Death Valley regional groundwater flow system that resulted from the activities conducted at the Nevada Test Site. I’m open for questions.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you very much, and thank you for the research that you did. Actually, I worked on something similar years ago, and Roy Neighbors has worked on it, and we’ve had quite a few people. Hank Etchemendy and I had worked on it some years back trying to find we’re not getting paid just for the parcels that we have currently, let alone those that were absconded with by the feds. I appreciate your bringing this forward.
Assemblyman Hardy:
The Nevada Test Site gives the federal government an excuse to make good what you point out where we didn’t get the full land benefit. That’s what states have done. They’ve created their own permanent school fund for funding of education. That’s where I would propose that we look at that. If you look at your handout on the APPLE Initiative (Exhibit G), and turn to page 28 at the bottom and it gives you a graphic example of how much federal land is owned in Nevada.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
They’ve got a lot in California.
Assemblyman Hardy:
Then if you look on pages 41 and 43, you see what the annual property tax revenue is lost on page 41, and what their formula for saying annual property tax lost to public education. This is an annual. If you multiplied annual property tax revenue loss by 2 of 305 million you could quickly figure out that that’s over $600 million, which would be a good investment.
Assemblyman Anderson:
In computing the percentage of federal land ownership, I was under the impression that Nevada had a different percentage. I’m kind of curious relative to whether you’re including Forest Service lands and Native American lands in your computation?
Assemblyman Hardy:
I think that’s where the difference in the 87 and the 82 percent come from. When I say federal, I mean federally controlled. There’s a difference of about 5 percent in there.
Assemblyman Anderson:
I was under the impression that Nevada came second to Alaska, and I think that’s because of the federal—
Assemblyman Hardy:
Your impression is correct, sir.
Dan Musgrove, Clark County:
[Introduced himself] As you’re well aware, Clark County, along with the state of Nevada, is very involved in the fight against Yucca Mountain. The sponsor of the bill alluded to the language on page 5, lines 6 through 8. I think that we may be giving a false impression that we’re ready to accept high-level radioactive waste through rail lines. There is no rail line that goes to Yucca. Nowhere else in the bill does it talk about the high-level radioactive waste, and I think it’s been the position of the state that we’re not dealing. He has an excellent method here to try and get some compensation by dealing with the test site, something that we have already dealt with for years. I think we need to be very wary of the acknowledgment that waste is going to come in on the railroad.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think Mr. Hardy alluded to that as amenable. I don’t think that was his intent. In fact, that’s what the Vice Chair and I were just talking about. We don’t want to paint any picture of acceptance, and I don’t think that’s the intent here. It’s to try to recapture some dollars. Thank you very much for pointing that out.
Randy Robison, Nevada Association of School Boards:
[Introduced himself] We’re in support of both A.J.R. 5 and A.J.R. 6 for similar, but distinct, reasons. I’ll speak to A.J.R. 6. We believe that there is some relation between the fiscal health of counties and the fiscal health of school districts, particularly in rural areas, and more particularly in those rural areas that have large percentages of federally owned lands. Because of that premise, we stand in support of A.J.R. 6. Thanks.
Janine Hansen, Nevada Committee for Full Statehood:
[Introduced herself] We support this issue, but I want to bring a couple of things to your understanding. You may have received this (Exhibit H). Sometimes we think that all of the land in Nevada is public land. It doesn’t refer in this initiative to “public land.” It calls it “federally owned.” However, if you’ll look at this, these are all grazing allotments, which cover the state of Nevada, which are adjudicated, which are inheritable, and which are taxable.
On the second page, I provided you with some information from the Supreme Court on the definition of “public lands.” I think we need to realize that there are rights and claims. It says, for instance, “It is well settled that all land to which any claims or rights of others have attached does not fall within the designation of public lands.” These adjudicated grazing allotments, which have grazing rights, access rights, forage rights, water rights, some of the lands may have mineral rights on them, these are all lands which have private property rights attached to them. Those are all private property.
[Ms. Hansen, continued] As we look at doing something with these—and we’re certainly in favor of Nevada having the benefit of our own lands—in 1998, Nevada voters overwhelmingly voted to repeal the disclaimer clause, which allowed the federal government to control our lands. You should look towards enforcing NRS 321 and take responsibility for the lands in Nevada. All of these ones that have already been adjudicated would be available for property taxes. They aren’t just open land that nobody owns. They do have claims on them already, and that’s something I’ve come to understand in the last few years. We always thought they were open public lands, but they aren’t. There are actually claims there. That money would be available for the state of Nevada.
We need to go even beyond these initiatives and recognizing that Nevada needs to take claim of her land. It talks about “equal footing” in these. We’re not the same as Virginia or Missouri or anywhere else. Our land was taken by the federal government—forced—in order for us to have statehood. We need to look at restoring that. The people that control those allotments are already managing them. That’s an opportunity for us, and certainly, that’s noted in the tenth amendment. I won’t go on, because the time is short.
Merritt Yochum, Independent American Party:
[Introduced himself] I will address both A.J.R. 5 and A.J.R. 6 consecutively, because they’re pretty much similar. I’m in full agreement with the “whereases.” They’re very to the point, and they’re very true, and they’re very necessary. However, the resolution is not sufficient, I don’t believe. By adopting these resolutions, we’re tacitly agreeing that the federal government actually owns some of Nevada land. That is not true. As Janine mentioned, in 1979, this Legislature passed what is commonly known as the Nevada Lands Ownership Act. It’s NRS 321. As she suggested, the best thing to do is enforce that law. The law is already on the books. You don’t have to do anything except enforce that law, which would not require a whole lot of legislation to get that done. This whole thing sort of reminds me of a story that Dan Hansen used to tell me.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Mr. Yochum, can I beg your indulgence? Could I ask Assemblyman Hettrick to come up and introduce his bill so at least we can get that on the record? Any further testimony that we would need to take, we could take up in work session when I post it again, because we do have to get to the Floor. Would that be permissible?
Merritt Yochum:
Sure.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We’ll open the hearing on A.J.R. 5.
Assembly Joint Resolution 5: Urges Congress to appropriate just compensation to State of Nevada for losses of revenue for public education from impact of land in Nevada held by Federal Government. (BDR R-1070)
Assemblyman Lynn Hettrick, District No. 39, Douglas County:
[Introduced himself] I’ll simply say to you that the difference between A.J.R. 5 and A.J.R. 6 is mostly that the Council of State Governments West adopted A.J.R. 5. It is being passed by all 13 of the western states as we speak. It was already adopted by the Council of State Governments West at their meeting at Lake Tahoe last July. The Western Governors’ Association has also adopted A.J.R. 5.
The intent here is to band the 13 western states together with their congressional representatives as a group. I will give a very brief summary of why I think this has an opportunity. About 6 or 8 years ago, the Forested Counties Coalition was put together by counties that have forestland that was stopped from logging by federal law. The Forested Counties Coalition went together. Everybody thought they didn’t have a prayer. They did exactly what we are trying to do with A.J.R. 5. It went to Congress. They have collected significant millions since.
[Mr. Hettrick, continued] We have been in contact with Senator Larry Craig’s office from Idaho. He was a major supporter of the Forested Counties Coalition. He wants to help us with A.J.R. 5. He is also enlisting the help of the Forested Counties Coalition to work with us for the same reason, because we believe there is strength in numbers.
What we think is going to happen here is we’re going to see all of the representatives from the western states go to Congress and say, “All of us are being cheated.” The numbers in A.J.R. 5 are similar to what you heard from Mr. Hardy: about $116 million a year in property taxes, and about $6 million lost to royalties. Nothing said about the money they should have given us all along when they took it away in the first place, which was in the Constitution. They were supposed to give us money from long since, which we never got. If you take all of that into account, we have a pretty good case to make, I believe. What A.J.R. 5 is asking is that we band together and try to collect this money. [Mr. Hettrick presented a letter from the Superintendent of Public Instruction (Exhibit I).]
Assemblyman Beers:
Is there anything in A.J.R. 5 that conflicts with A.J.R. 6? Could we conceivably do them both?
Assemblyman Hettrick:
Yes. I believe they can both be done. I think one is specifically addressing an issue in Nevada, and the other is addressing the issue of the 13 western states, all of whom are being effectively cheated and will band us together with the other 12 in an attempt to get a fair resolution for all.
Assemblyman Beers:
I guess my second question would be has Assemblyman Hardy shown an inclination for joining CSG West and have it all input through those guys?
Assemblyman Hettrick:
I hope he does, and I hope all of you would be a party to CSG West as well, because clearly, what we have here is an opportunity to have a voice as the 13 western states. You can see from the map that Mr. Hardy pointed out to you why the 13 western states care and nobody else does. If we don’t band together, we’ll get nothing. That is the intent.
The one other thing that I will say about A.J.R. 5: Nowhere do we call it public land or say that it’s federally owned. We say, “held” by the federal government. We do not acknowledge that they own the land. We do not acknowledge that it’s federally owned in any way. I believe it’s held against our will by the federal government.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. We’ll take note of that when we take it up in work session.
Assemblywoman McClain:
Maybe we should change that word to “kidnapped.”
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I’ll note for the record that John Wagner, Janine Hansen, Mr. Yochum, and Randy Robison also signed in in support of this legislation as well. Thank you very much.
We will close the hearing on A.J.R. 5 and A.J.R. 6.
Committee, before you leave, I have BDR R-684. It directs the Legislative Commission to conduct an interim study of election, ethics, and campaign laws in the state.
ASSEMBLYMAN ANDERSON MOVED TO INTRODUCE BDR R-684.
ASSEMBLYWOMAN McCLAIN SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION CARRIED.
[The meeting was adjourned at 5:04 p.m.]
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:
Kelly Fisher
Committee Secretary
APPROVED BY:
Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, Chairwoman
DATE: