Offices called too big

      CARSON CITY -- When Senate Government Affairs Chairwoman Ann O'Connell gazed at her new office Monday, she wondered what the hard-working folks back home would think.
      In her inner office, space exists for 12 people to sit. And both her committee secretaries and her personal secretary can sit in the outer office. One of them even has a personal office.
      "My office is too big," said O'Connell, R-Las Vegas.
      A watchdog on state spending, O'Connell maintains it was a waste of taxpayers' money for legislators two years ago to appropriate $19.1 million to double the size of the Legislative Building.
      The second floor of the four-floor addition was completed over the weekend. Staff members moved seven of the nine Senate committee chairmen into new offices.
      As the result of the move, only a handful of senators met in committee meetings Monday. The Natural Resources, Judiciary, Human Resources, and Commerce and Labor committees postponed meeting because of the move. Wiring to sound speakers had not been completed into their hearing rooms.
      "It's going to set us back a day or two," said Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas.
      Rawson presided over a Senate Finance Committee meeting in a room where panels for the ceiling were missing.
      But the acoustics in the new hearing room were excellent. And walls were covered with a luxurious simulated mahogany paneling.
      Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, described the new Senate offices as "opulent."
      "We have spent your tax dollars on offices that are bigger than the offices in the U.S. Senate," she said.
      O'Connell, one of the handful of senators who voted against the building project in 1995, said legislators have so much office space that the building should not be expanded again for another 60 years.
      The Legislature Building was completed for $3.4 million in 1970. For the previous 100 years, the Legislature had met in the second floor of the state Capitol.
      The bill to expand the Legislative Building was devised after Assembly members complained their offices were so small two people could not squeeze in to talk with them.
      Assembly members are in line for new offices. Many of them will not be finished for a couple more months.
      Lorne Malkiewich, the legislative administrator, expects the third floor of the addition to be completed April 21. The fourth floor should be finished before the Legislature adjourns in early July.
      Titus does not expect to move into her new office on the second floor for another three weeks. Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, wants her out of a first-floor suite near his own office.
      Once Titus is gone, Republican Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren will move from a second floor office to one adjacent to Raggio on the first floor. Hammargren also has an office next door in the Capitol.
      "The separation between the Republicans and Democrats is going to be even greater than it is now," Titus said.