Vol. 3, No. 1
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October 31, 2005
Nevada's Online State News Journal
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CRIMINAL DEFENSE |
COPYWRITING
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Feature Story:
The Nevada Observer, Two Full Years And Counting
Exciting Times, Exciting People And Politics, Are Remembered Here
by the editors and publisher
First and foremost, Happy Nevada Day, 2005. Honest Abe, by signing Nevada's statehood on October 31, 1864 has gotten in the way of commercial Hallowe'en nonsense, but those of us who call ourselves Nevadan will look with pride and pleasure at his gift. It has become a tradition at The Nevada Observer (TNO) to begin each publication year on October 31, and then through the rest of the year, we publish on the first and 15th of each month.
At the top of the home page it says Volume 3, Number 1. Where on earth have the last two years gone? From Volume 1, Number 1, this has been one exciting ride, and it ain't over yet, Pard. Here's a quick look back at this past year and some of the major news events that have been covered in these pages.
One of the reasons we prefer to consider TNO a news magazine rather than a newspaper is the ability the Internet gives us to go in-depth, and go in-depth we have on several occasions. From the Kathy Augustine/Janet Moncrief/C&E reports debacle in which Attorney General Brian Sandoval and Secretary of State Dean Heller got into a name calling exhibition and the state Senate rolled over and played politics, to Yucca Mountain and alleged lies and duplicity from people who are supposed to be scientists, TNO has gone in-depth.
It hasn't been all bad news by a long shot. Nevada became an election laboratory of sorts when it began using touch screen voting machines with a paper trail. A federal law mandating the updating of election procedures in the country led to the touch screen voting machines, but it was Nevada's general population and their demands for a paper trail that led to Nevada's Secretary of State to implement the idea.
Touch screen voting with the paper trail led to one of the smoothest elections on record in Nevada and because of this success many more states will be incorporating the paper trail in their elections. As part of that federal law on elections, Nevada's counties have almost completed a statewide database of registered voters. Voter fraud, as any fraud, will never end. There will always be those who feel they have a right to cheat, but Nevada's election procedures are in far better shape now than they were two years ago.
As in so many other parts of the country, Nevada has seen a tremendous increase in the use and manufacture of methamphetamines, and they are not only a rural problem. Reno and Las Vegas police agencies, with help from the feds have had their hands full of the problem, and TNO has been there to describe how distribution works, how deadly the use of the drug is, and has offered suggestions by way of our opinion pages on what might be done to slow the plague down.
Distribution of Meth comes from back yard storage sheds to international crime cartels, some based in Europe and driven by Israeli gangs, some based in Mexico. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has indicated the drug now is becoming the drug of choice for gay communities in New York and San Francisco, and manufacture of the drug in Nevada rural areas helps feed this demand.
In the world of politics, we have been in the middle of some exciting events. As mentioned above, the Kathy Augustine impeachment proceedings brought considerable consternation among our readers. Augustine, accused of using state office staff and equipment in her bid for reelection was brought before the Assembly and impeached. The vote was unanimous. Impeached on three counts.
The proceedings then moved to trial before the Senate, and the ugly world of good-old-boy politics ran rampant through the Legislative halls in Carson City. When the dust cleared, Kathy Augustine was still the State Controller, found not guilty of two of the impeachment charges, and censured lightly on the third. There is a full accounting of the impeachment and trial on our home page. Click here.
The frustration of the Kathy Augustine affair wasn't the collapse of the Senate, wasn't the blatant political ramifications of underhanded politics, it was the reaction of the general public. That reaction was encapsulated in one word, apathy. "This is what we expected," is the answer TNO got from readers. "Politicians are crooked, we know that, and we can't expect anything but the worst from them." And life goes on.
Almost as the Augustine affair was going on, Las Vegas City Councilwoman Janet Moncrief was brought before a grand jury in Clark County. Led by prosecutors from the Attorney General's office, an indictment was handed down based on Nevada's election laws. The state ethics commission probably should have been the one to bring the initial charges. The Secretary of State's office probably should have backed the Attorney General since it is the Secretary who is Nevada's elections officer. But it didn't come down that way.
In fact the Attorney General Brian Sandoval ended up in a name-calling fracas with Secretary of State Dean Heller, and Nevada's election law is the same today as it was two years ago.
Moncrief alleged selective prosecution and she won the point. When it was disclosed that Assemblyman Chad Christiansen had some 50 violations of election law and was fined $4,500, the felony charges against Moncrief began to unravel. When it was disclosed that six judges and candidates for the bench in Clark County were in direct violation of election law and judicial canon and nothing came of it, Moncrief's defense looked even better.
When it became known that an entire political party is refusing to obey the Contributions and Expenses (C&E) Reports law, Moncrief all but walked. The Independent American Party and its candidates have refused to fill out the C&E reports. They have yet to be brought up on any kind of election law charge.
We at TNO suggested in our opinion pages that Nevada's election law needs to be rewritten, but the legislature did nothing. Secretary of State Dean Heller continues to say he can't get involved in making sure the C&Es are legally up to date, Attorney General Brian Sandoval got bit on the Moncrief and Augustine fiascoes, and maybe, just maybe, with both those men not being in office after the 2006 elections, we can get some coherence to the law. Despite his less than stellar court actions in the Moncrief affair Sandoval is now a federal judge and Heller is running for congress.
Starting last January Nevada had one of its fiercest winters in many a year. Snow piled up in Reno to depths of five and six feet, rain fell in Las Vegas measured in feet as well, and for many, a multi-year drought was broken. This brought fears of the West Nile Virus becoming very dangerous during the spring and summer months. There is no doubt the virus had an influence on many lives, but its severity wasn't evident across the state. Health departments worked very hard to keep the mosquito population in check, and people with livestock heard the warnings and took proper action.
As the storms pounded the state north and south, those in the Legislature were getting ready for their regular biennial session, the governor was preparing his state-of-the-state message, and the first rumblings of a tax rebate were being heard. The 2005 Legislative Session will probably not go into the history books as being particularly significant with one minor exception. The property tax law that was enacted will be discussed for years to come.
A cap on property tax increases passed during the session and the governor signed it into law. The only other thing that most Nevadans will remember is the $300 million rebate. Checks are in hand for most, although there were some problems with that.
The names and addresses for the rebate checks came from the DMV database and it became clear that that database wasn't quite as complete as many thought. Some people didn't get checks even though they should have. The governor says he's working on the problem.
At a certain point in each legislative session no more bills are allowed to be introduced. Just before that date in this session a flood of "hundreds of bills" came in. By law each bill must carry a summary and digest when it is distributed. The Legislative Council Bureau used a little known part of the law to suspend writing the digests and summaries. Those digests are not only used by the general public in order to understand the bill in question, they are also used by those testifying before various legislative committees. There should have been general uproar over the discontinuing of the digests, but there was little.
DMV had a problem of its own when a well engineered break in at a DMV office in southern Nevada netted the criminals computers filled with personal information, driver license blanks along with the cover that makes them legal, and equipment to run everything. The case has never been solved, but the perpetrators were apparently frightened enough that they managed to return everything. Some say the material that had been stolen was so hot it couldn't be used by anyone. Others say the crime was committed by less than professional thieves. In any case there have been no arrests.
Water in the State of Nevada is at a premium and those that own water rights are sitting on a potential one time financial bonanza. Those that want water should be prepared to pay dearly for it. Because of virtually uncontrolled growth in Clark and Washoe Counties, the availability of water is of daily concern.
In southern Nevada, there is a concerted effort underway to build a pipeline from White Pine County to Clark County to bring water south. Opposition to the idea comes from White Pine County and the farming and ranching communities of eastern Utah. Large amounts of money are involved and federal court action is sure to take place.
In the north, building in Washoe County continues despite the lack of water sources. Discussions are underway regularly on where to get more water. Some are advocating pipelines from as far away as Pershing County to the east, and Fish Lake Valley in eastern California.
Agricultural interests are considered secondary in the quest for more water in many cases. One company actually bought a 10,000-acre alfalfa ranch in order to have the water rights to sell to the Truckee Meadows Water Authority. Vidler Water Company says they will simply let the alfalfa fields dry up if they can sell their water. These battles will continue for years to come and will cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And that brings us to the articles on the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository near Las Vegas. Yucca Mountain news seems to be one of the contributing factors to the success of TNO, but our readers are not all in agreement that Yucca is not a good thing for Nevada. And, northern Nevada readers seem to be less than concerned about the project.
We've had something about the project in almost every issue this past year. When allegations of lying and duplicity were made against hydrologists working on the project, the number of people interested in the project increased considerably. Congressman Jon Porter (R-NV) has been holding hearings on the matter, and it seems that at every turn the Department of Energy (DOE) has thrown roadblocks at the inquiry.
Congressional interest in the project is also increasing, and some in Congress are beginning to ask the hard questions. Senator Bennett of Utah, one of the big supporters of nuclear energy in the country has come out against the Yucca project. The articles on Bennett and his reasoning have drawn considerable interest from our readers.
He has been among the first to point out that the Yucca project isn't large enough for the high level nuclear waste on the ground now, and with continued building of nuclear energy plants around the country, Yucca simply isn't capable of handling the waste. Bennett has come out strongly in favor of the waste being stored at the energy plant sites around the country. In his words, "If the casks are safe enough to be transported and stored at Yucca they certainly are safe enough to be stored at the site of the nuclear plant."
The news about Yucca Mountain won't go away, and the writers and editors at The Nevada Observer will continue to delve as deeply as possible to get to the truth about its safety and its credibility. DOE has been less than forthcoming even to Congress, we're sure they aren't being forthcoming to the general public.
So, it's Volume 3, Number 1. Let the games continue.
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