Heller hits nerve on energy nomination

U.S. Sen. Dean Heller hit a nerve last week when the Senate voted on an Energy Department nominee with ties to Yucca Mountain.

Make that a couple of nerves.

The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Joseph Hezir to be the department’s chief financial officer. The vote was 89-3, with Heller one of the three.

Heller, R-Nev., pointed out that Hezir was a consultant and former lobbyist whose firm, the EOP Group, did lobbying throughout the 2000s for the Nuclear Energy Institute. Hezir’s lobbyist filings show he worked on Yucca Mountain and other nuclear waste issues.

Hezir halted lobbying in 2011, records show. The Washington Times reported he signed an ethics agreement saying he would resign as EOP Group vice president and director upon confirmation.

Heller said the connection between the nominee and the controversial Nevada nuclear waste site was too close for his comfort. On the Energy Department website, the chief financial officer’s job description includes “strategic planning,” with budget administration, program analysis and evaluation, finance and accounting, internal controls and corporate financial systems.

“Today I am standing up for Nevada,” Heller said after the vote. “Our delegation has fought for years to defund studies and processes leading to the approval of Yucca Mountain. Now we have someone who specifically lobbied the administration and Congress in favor of Yucca Mountain, as recently as two years ago, to oversee finances and implement departmentwide programs.”

Heller was further irked that Hezir was confirmed without a hearing that would have allowed him to be questioned on his lobbying.

A standing order the Senate approved in June 2011 listed the chief financial officer post among 200 presidentially appointed positions not required to go through a committee confirmation. Heller voted against that order.

There may have been a day in which a nominee carrying even a whiff of Yucca Mountain wouldn’t have made it through confirmation with Nevadans on guard.

That day might have passed — at least for now. Far from pursuing Yucca Mountain, the Energy Department under President Barack Obama has declared the site “unworkable” and says it has no plans to revisit the project.

A spokeswoman said Thursday that the Energy Department’s opposition to Yucca was “unwavering.”

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., voted to confirm Hezir, and a spokeswoman said afterward that concern over the nominee was unfounded.

“The biggest threat to a Yucca revival is the soon-to-be Republican majority in the Senate, not an individual who will have zero policy responsibilities,” the spokeswoman, Kristen Orthman, said. “We have assurances from the secretary of Energy and the White House that the agency will not pursue Yucca Mountain … Senator Reid will continue to work with the delegation and state, as he has for decades, to keep Yucca locked up and closed, like it is now.”

Bob Halstead, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said there is value in reminders that Nevada’s official stance opposes Yucca Mountain even as relations with the federal government appear smoother than in the past.

“I think it is important to remind everyone that Nevada will do what is necessary to protect the state’s interests,” Halstead said.

— Steve Tetreault

MORE TO ANNEXATION FIGHT

The sparring between Clark County residents and Las Vegas leaders over a torrent of planned land annexations took up the better part of three hours spread across two meetings last week.

Both sides are still looking for the last word.

A 14-year annexation agreement between the municipalities had allowed county landowners to tie into city infrastructure without paying higher taxes to become a city resident.

That interlocal agreement expired in January, leaving the city with a backlog of 250 parcels subject to an annexation request dating to 2000.

Las Vegas leaders have already moved on a handful of those requests, taking the first steps toward planting the city’s flag on over 100 acres of property between Centennial Parkway and West Oakey Boulevard.

They got an earful over the move Wednesday, hearing complaints from county residents opposed to a tax increase and afraid of city encroachment on their rural way of life.

It didn’t take long for that conversation to become a lot more expansive — eventually encompassing jurisdictional issues ranging from the city’s share of fire protection duties to its role in maintaining flood channels.

County residents accused city leaders of angling to raise their taxes.

City Councilman Steve Ross later shot back that they were “uninformed.”

But county residents also accused the city of failing to hold up its end of cross-jurisdictional fire, police and emergency services agreements.

City Manager Betsy Fretwell countered with a battery of statistics on city mutual aid responses before pointing out the city’s role in supporting the Las Vegas Valley’s only bomb squad.

Back and forth it went, and back and forth it will probably go, at least until the city and county square away other issues, including a touchy, multimillion-dollar battle being quietly waged over vendor fees collected on land annexed by the city.

Councilman Bob Coffin couldn’t provide a lot of detail on that fight, except to say that he heard it involved around $30 million in unpaid county fees owed to Las Vegas.

He acknowledged that sudden flare-ups surrounding annexations are, to a large extent, probably just skirmishes along the edges of the much larger jurisdictional war.

“There’s a lot of money and a lot of politics included in this,” Coffin said Monday. “We were supposed to get a portion of (vendor) fees on land that was annexed, but we never got it.”

“Isn’t that what this problem really is?” Coffin asked Deputy City Manager Orlando Sanchez. “That we never got that money that the county owes the city?”

“I think what you’re talking about, councilman, is the fire districts up in the northwest,” Sanchez answered. “That’s something that is still going back and forth between the city and the county.”

Sanchez did not return further requests for comment on the issue, one that Fretwell raised Wednesday.

“I didn’t intend to get into a huge mutual aid conversation because we are trying to work this out with the county right now,” she said. “But I think it’s important to note that people don’t helicopter in to these (county) islands, they use our roads that we pay for through our tax allocations.”

City leaders haven’t said when they plan to revisit the jurisdictional clash over more than 200 remaining county annexation proposals.

— James DeHaven

PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENT

A UNR professor has been named by President Barack Obama to serve on the 12-member J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Emma Sepúlveda Pulvirenti, the University of Nevada, Reno Foundation professor in foreign language and literature and director of the Latino Research Center, will serve on the board that selects students, scholars, teachers and others from the United States and abroad to participate in Fulbright exchanges. The international exchange program allows grantees to study, teach or conduct research.

“It’s a wonderful honor to be nominated to the Fulbright Commission by President Obama,” Sepúlveda said. “I am grateful to be among so many great leaders and take this appointment seriously; the Fulbright Program is one near and dear to my heart.”

Sepúlveda was born in Argentina and raised in Chile. In 1995, she founded Latinos for Political Education, advocating for civic engagement by members of the Latino community. She has served on the boards of United Way, the Girl Scouts, Habitat for Humanity and KNPB, the public television station in Northern Nevada. She served as a member of the Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino from 2009 to 2011.

On the board, Sepúlveda will join the other members for quarterly meetings to establish policies for Fulbright selection and operating procedures and will prepare an annual report.

The board works closely with the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, U.S. embassies, bilateral Fulbright Commissions in host countries and the U.S. Department of Education’s International and Foreign Language Office of Postsecondary Education.

“This is another accolade for a wonderful ambassador of our land-grant university,” said Marcelo Vazquez, associate dean of students.

— Sean Whaley

HARDY NAMED TO COMMITTEES

U.S. Rep.-elect Cresent Hardy has been assigned to House committees that deal with resource programs and transportation. The posts were confirmed last week by Hardy Chief of Staff Alan Tennille.

Hardy, who will take office Jan. 6, will sit on the Committee on Natural Resources, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and other federal land and water agencies. The post is a fit with Hardy’s district that includes northern Clark County and all or part of six rural counties in central Nevada.

The Mesquite Republican, a general contractor and construction company co-owner, also will sit on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which handles legislation on highways, waterways and airports.

Tennille also said Hardy has hired Sonia Joya to be his district director in Nevada. Joya, Nevada director of government affairs for the Hill International construction group, has also worked in various capacities with Gov. Brian Sandoval, former Gov. Kenny Guinn, former U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and former Rep. Barbara Vucanovich, R-Nev.

— Steve Tetreault

Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760. Find him on Twitter: @STetreaultDC. Contact Capital Bureau reporter Sean Whaley at swhaley@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3900. Find him on Twitter: @seanw801. Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven.