Legislative Commission plans interim committee appointments

The Legislative Commission meets today to make appointments to a long list of interim studies, statutory and other committees.

Legislative leaders hadn't planned on having to make most of those decisions this interim. Instead they proposed and passed a bill expanding the responsibilities of their legislative standing committees to do the interim work. The leadership argued that it makes more sense to have the committees that will take up each issue handle the interim work in those areas.

But Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed the measure, saying it would have infringed on the executive branch. That put lawmakers back to Square One, with their existing collection of committees having to handle interim issues.

In all cases, members of the Legislature have been invited to list the committees they would like to be appointed to, along with the other committees they would be willing to serve on if needed.

There are numerous openings on the various study panels this interim because of the loss of many veterans in those slots who were termed out of office, including Sens. Mark Amodei of Carson City, Elko's Dean Rhoads and former Assembly Ways and Means Chairman Morse Arberry of Las Vegas.

There are just three interim legislative studies on this year's list but they involve weighty issues. A committee of lawmakers will be named to study the allocation of money distributed from the Local Government Tax Distribution Account. A separate study will examine the state's laws for the protection of children, and the third will look at the structure and operations of the Legislature.

Each of those panels will consist of six legislators, three from each house.

There also are six ongoing interim committees created by statute whose members must be chosen by the commission, including the Committee for the Review and Oversight of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and Marlette Lake Water System, and committees on health care issues, public lands and juvenile justice. There also is the committee to consult with the director, which oversees operation of the Legislative Counsel Bureau.

The final statutory panel is the committee created to review Nevada's increasingly complex array of specialty license plates. While most of those have six members, the committee to consult and the public lands panel have nine. The ninth on Public Lands is a local government representative. The child welfare and juvenile justice committee has 10 members.

The commission also appoints members to a number of panels that are not exclusively made up of lawmakers. There are 11 on the list including the Commission on Ethics, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, and the Commission on Aging.

The membership of those panels includes other appointees, primarily by the governor.

In addition, there are a number of committees with members chosen by legislative leadership including the Committee on High-Level Radioactive Waste and the Committee on Education. The Legislative Commission, however, names the chairman and vice chairman of those committees.

Finally, the committee today portions out the money each committee will have to complete its work in this and the next fiscal year. The staff recommendations call for spending $294,424 in FY 2012 and $192,200 in FY 2013. That leaves just over $47,000 in revenue this biennium to take care of any unexpected study needs that come up before the start of the 2013 Legislature.