Tahoe County project moves ahead

     Associated Press
      CARSON CITY -- A showdown over the move to form a new "Tahoe County," by taking away Tahoe areas from three existing Nevada counties, drew closer Thursday with the naming of Assembly members of a special panel studying the issue.
      Assembly Speaker Joe Dini, D-Yerington, named seven lower house members to serve on the Select Committee on Formation of Tahoe County. They include Dini and fellow Democrats Doug Bache, Vivian Freeman and Richard Perkins and Republicans Mark Amodei, Lynn Hettrick and Pete Ernaut.
      The Senate's members on the panel should be named Monday. The list is expected to include Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio and fellow Republicans Lawrence Jacobsen, Ann O'Connell and Jon Porter, and Democrats Ernie Adler, Ray Shaffer and Bernice Mathews.
      The special panel's first meeting is scheduled for June 3, and by then a long-awaited bill that would allow for the new county should be introduced.
      But other pending legislation also covers issues that prompted advocates of the secession move to seek their own county.
      That includes a charter school proposal that just won state Senate approval and moved to the Assembly for final action.
      Charters are agreements among a group of parents or community leaders and a local school district allowing a public school to operate independently.
      That could help cover some of the concerns of "Tahoe County" advocates who don't like the way schools operate under the existing district system that's centered in county seats like Reno and Minden, in valleys east of Tahoe communities that are in the same counties.
      Lawmakers also could deal with policy issues like levels of road maintenance and other services by setting benchmarks for such services and then maintaining oversight -- without actually forming a new county.
      And the lawmakers could provide for a shifting of room taxes and other revenue that might allow for more dollars for Tahoe-area marketing -- again, without actually creating what would be Nevada's 18th county.
      But for now, advocates are pushing ahead with the new county proposal.
      "We're looking forward to our first hearing," said lobbyist Harvey Whittemore, hired by the Tahoe Citizens Committee to help get the Tahoe County plan approved this session.
      The TCC had said earlier that it expected a bill to be introduced and a hearing to be held in the Senate Government Affairs Committee in April.
      The special committee now being set up would take the issue out of the hands of that panel and its Assembly counterpart, although the lawmakers who chair both -- O'Connell and Bache -- will be on the new committee.
      The bill that the special panel will get is expected to be a skeleton measure that leaves many of the details blank to be filled in based on testimony from all parties involved.