Tuesday, December 31, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: Steve Sebelius

Bye-bye to 2002

It's Dec. 31, the last day of the year, the end of 2002. Thank God.

This wasn't a good year in Nevada politics -- with a couple of key exceptions. Here they are, in my annual year in review:

• Yucca Mountain: The worst thing about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump vote was not President Bush's broken promise to judge the merits of the plan based on science and not politics. It was not Sen. John Ensign's failure to secure even a single additional Republican vote, although he ran on the premise that he would be better able to secure Republican "no" votes than would his 2000 rival, attorney Ed Bernstein. It was not the millions of tax dollars and private donations wasted on an advertising campaign that only enriched consultants. The worst thing is that, in the end, Nevada is going to get the dump.

• Drug war lies: Lies seem to come so naturally to drug warriors, they forget how to tell the truth. First, drug czar John Walters promised not to campaign against the marijuana-legalizing Question 9 ballot initiative. By year's end, he was not only speaking out against the effort to legalize marijuana at every turn, he was vowing to fight it in other states, too.

Second, the drug czar's office began airing ads during the Super Bowl in February claiming that drug profits pay for terrorism, although proof of the link to the Sept. 11 terrorists was conspicuously absent. Later, his office had to admit the spots were not as effective as had been hoped.

Not to be outdone, Deputy District Attorney Gary Booker alleged that "drug cartels" were behind Question 9, an outrageous assertion that was first made by ex-felon and political nutjob Lyndon LaRouche. Booker later insisted in an interview that he hadn't made the remark, but didn't realize at the time he'd been caught on tape saying it. Will new District Attorney David Roger assign someone to make sure Booker doesn't lie in court? He should.

• Elections: The November elections were a showcase of wasted potential. Clark County Commissioner Dario Herrera imploded on ethics, and his mismanaged campaign went down in flames to the focused efforts of former state Sen. Jon Porter, who started campaigning for perhaps the first time in his life. It worked. And fellow Commissioner Erin Kenny met her reputation in the streets of Clark County -- her base -- only to discover that more people disliked her than not. Must have been all those regulations telling them not to shop for cars on Sunday, not to shop at Wal-Mart ever, not to talk on a cell phone while driving and not to smoke. People are funny that way.

• Michael Mack: Las Vegas Councilman Michael Mack fought the law -- and the law lost, big time. By year's end, Mack was alive and kicking, and disclosing so much he's on his way to being named the most ethical member of the City Council. But the poor Ethics Review Board, which found Mack had broken the law and sent him to Municipal Court to be stripped of his office, was abolished.

• Tort reform follies: Nevada doctors, who earned a reputation for political naivete during a special session held to pass a medical malpractice tort reform bill, cemented that image by circulating an initiative petition designed to get the few things they left the special session without. The initiative, which closely mirrors California's famous MICRA tort reform act, would remove exceptions to caps on judgments and limit attorney's fees. The only problem is, the doctors are looking for overnight reductions in malpractice rates, and that's simply not going to happen, no matter what bill is passed.

There is, however, a way that rates could be reduced immediately: Nevada could establish European-style socialized medicine, where doctors would become employees of the government, insulated by sovereign immunity from big judgments. Any takers out there?

• Nevada Power: Nevada Power, with stock in the junk-bond range, spent more than $1.6 million to defeat an advisory measure asking voters if they preferred public power. (That's a lot of penny stocks!) Meanwhile, the company continues to sit on a very real (and reasonable) offer from the Southern Nevada Water Authority to buy the utility for $3.2 billion. And a lawsuit to recover more than $400 million in deferred energy charges that were rejected as imprudent by the Public Utilities Commission is still pending. And Nevada Power continues to air TV ads that try to put a human face on the company. It's not working.

One of the shadow battles of the 2003 Legislature will be a fight over whether to extend a ban on hostile takeovers of electric utilities by municipal agencies. Let's hope lawmakers can tear themselves away from taxes, tort reform and the new three-toed sloth license plate long enough to say no.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.