Committee would set pay for Nevada officials

There was little support Friday in an Assembly panel for a plan to amend the Nevada Constitution to create a citizens committee that would set salaries of some elected officials.

AJR1 would remove Nevada lawmakers' power to set their own salaries, while giving county commissioners the ability to set their pay and pay of other county officials. Now, the Legislature sets those salaries.

Despite criticism of the proposal during Friday's hearing in the Committee on Constitutional Amendments, the panel's chairman, Assemblyman Harry Mortenson, D-Las Vegas, said he wouldn't accept a motion to kill it.

Assemblymen William Horne, D-Las Vegas, and Don Gustavson, R-Sun Valley, both suggested there wasn't enough support to get committee approval. But Mortenson instead said he'd schedule the resolution for an upcoming committee work session.

Horne said he was disappointed that county officials who had pushed the proposal in 2001 didn't appear at the hearing to support their idea.

A number of people told the committee that the proposed commission would lack oversight and that it's improper for people to set and spend public dollars if they aren't accountable to the voters.

"I don't like the independent commission determining salaries," said John Wagner, representing the Nevada Republican Assembly, a volunteer group not associated with the Legislature. "I think the voters of the state elect you people to do that."

Lucille Lusk of Nevada Concerned Citizens said the commission wouldn't truly be independent because its members would be appointed by the governor, the majority leader of the Senate and the speaker of the Assembly. The commission would set all three of their salaries.

Jim Nadeau of the Washoe County sheriff's office and the Nevada Sheriffs and Chiefs Association said he could support the bill only if it was amended to include county officials' salaries in those overseen by the commission.

The Nevada Association of Counties also supported the bill with the proposed amendment.