News

Rick PeRRy and yucca

Rick Perry’s nomination to be secretary of energy cleared committee but still needs a Senate confirmation vote, which he is expected to win.

There are conflicting signals on whether he knows what he’s going to do about Yucca Mountain, the site in Nevada’s Nye County that was slated for a dump for high level nuclear wastes. The dump was supposed to open in the 1990s, but vigorous legal opposition from the State of Nevada and, later, the opposition of U.S. Sen. Harry Reid more or less brought the project to a standstill.

When he ran for president in 2012, Perry said Nevada— and all states—should not be saddled with a nuclear waste dump unless it consented. “Allow the states to make the decision,” he said.

Environment & Energy Publishing ran an article headlined “Perry makes no promises on stalled Nev. Project” while the Washington Examiner went with “Perry vows solution to Yucca Mountain impasse.” Platts, a Standard & Poor’s energy newsletter, offered, “Perry says he does not have ‘definitive answer’ on Yucca.”

During hearings on Perry’s confirmation, he told Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, “I am not going to sit here, in front of you in a congressional hearing, and tell you, ‘In no way will Nevada be a recipient of nuclear waste.’”

Perry was once a strong supporter of renewables, particularly wind energy. But energy executive Andy Bowman wrote last week in the Houston Chronicle that after Barack Obama was elected president, “Many Republicans suddenly realized that whatever Obama was for, they were now against. Renewable energy was one of these aboutface issues, along with Romneycare and deficit spending, and Republican talking points on wind morphed from energy independence to Solyndra and the unsightliness of turbines. … [Perry] suddenly claimed he opposed not just wind, but all energy tax credits—a laughable position considering his own record.”

New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, whose state contains a deep geological repository for transuranic radioactive waste called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, said on Jan. 31 he would vote against confirming Perry’s nomination. Heinrich, who was born in Fallon, said, “But his past statements on eliminating the department, an unwillingness to commit to the applied energy research and climate science done at our national labs and universities, and the transition team questionnaire that attacked the integrity of climate scientists all signal where the Trump Administration is headed. Given these troubling signs, paired with Trump nominees thus far having said one thing and the administration doing another, I cannot give Gov. Perry the benefit of the doubt.”

keeP on tRying

On Jan. 25, Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a right wing Republican, said she had concluded, “There is no evidence of voters illegally casting ballots at the most recent election in Nevada.” Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval agreed.

The next day on a site called GatewayPundit, a John Chontos posted a reader comment: “First day of early voting at my senior center in Las Vegas at least 200 people in line, mostly Hispanic, while LaRaza had set up two trailers issuing voter IDs.” There are at least six senior citizen centers in Las Vegas. He was not specific.

Five days later, a site called NewsWithViews claimed illegal aliens had voted in Nevada. It was not specific. —Dennis Myers

These are the third, fifth and sixth editions of a volume that was once standard in Nevada higher education—The Nevada Constitution.

PHOTO/JERI CHADWELL-SINGLEY

Constitutional issues

Legislators revisit forgotten teaching requirements

the nevada Senate is processing a measure that would remove knowledge of the United States and Nevada constitutions, and knowledge of state statutes on schools, as requirements for school teachers in Nevada.

Senate Bill 20 was introduced by the Senate Education Committee at the request of the Clark County School District. It is already getting attention outside the state.

Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post ran the summary of the measure and then—apparently to indicate incredulity—wrote, “In case you didn’t quite believe what you read, the legislation would eliminate current requirements that licensing exams for teachers must include questions about the U.S. Constitution, Nevada’s constitution and state laws.”

Whether algebra or shop instructors must know about the constitutions and the voluminous hundreds of thousands of words in state school laws is only one factor legislators are considering. Of greater import to school districts is the difficulty they have dealing with recruitment in a teacher shortage. The Washoe County School District put out a statement: “WCSD supports S.B. 20 in reducing barriers to hiring teachers from out of state, especially in our hard-to-fill positions such as special education and secondary science and math.”

Teachers are not required at the outset of their teaching positions in Nevada to have this knowledge. The current statute allows “reasonable time” for teachers to bring themselves up to speed in the state. Exams are given semi-annually and teachers answer 55 questions on the constitutions and 70 on school laws. School laws are found in chapters 385 to 400 of Nevada Revised Statutes, plus a few others scattered through the 721 chapters. In a letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Sun, Henderson resident and retired teacher Robert Bencivenga wrote, “If an educated person cannot pass these rather straight-forward, relatively easy exams, she shouldn’t be inside of a classroom. And do you want to know why history and civics illiteracy is rampant in our country? Because legislators and education leaders continue to place history and government subjects at the bottom of importance in the educational hierarchy. During my 25 years with the Clark County School District, I was told dozens of times by principals, school district administrators and state legislators that the social studies just aren’t that important when looking at the bigger picture.”

One Nevada columnist, Victor Joecks, takes the libertarian view that employment requirements and licensing are a bad idea generally: “SB20 ... isn’t a litmus test on whether you care about the constitution. It’s about eliminating barriers to entry. Occupational licensing is a significant restriction in dozens of Nevada industries, and lawmakers should take an ax to as many licensing requirements as possible, including this one.”

LocaL PRobLemS

Even for teachers educated inside the state, instruction in these topics in Nevada higher education has become fairly casual. There is another statute that is not at issue at this year’s Legislature. It reads in part, “In all private schools, colleges and universities located within this state, except those [for the military and their families], instruction must be given in the essentials of the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Nevada, including the origin and history of the Constitutions and the study of and devotion to American institutions and ideals. ... A student in such schools must not receive a certificate or diploma of graduation without having passed an examination upon the Constitution.”

But longtime University of Nevada, Reno figures say students now get the bare bones of such instruction. It appears

to have happened during development of the campus’s “core curriculum” when political science and history were deemphasized.

One instructor said she is “not aware of any on-campus course that truly fits the requirements of the statute.”

Political scientist Richard Siegel, a professor emeritus who still teaches at UNR, said, “Some of us have been talking about this for decades. It’s sort of a lost battle.”

He also said, “There was long on the books a one-credit course in the Nevada Constitution.”

Such a course still exists, but not as classroom instruction: “PSC 100 - Nevada Constitution (1 unit) Introduction to the political history of Nevada through an examination of the Nevada Constitution. Satisfies the Nevada Constitution requirement. Not open to students who have obtained credit for PSC 103, PSC 208, or HIST 217. (Offered through correspondence only.)”

There is a grad level course, but it appears to have a broader purpose: “EL 791 - Special Topics: Nevada School of Law & Nevada Constitution Course.”

We were unable to determine what is used as a textbook. The book publishing arm of Nevada higher education once produced a title, The Nevada Constitution: Origin and Growth. It went through many editions over the years, updated in alternate editions by political scientists Eleanore Bushnell and Don Driggs. But the last update was many years ago, and the title is long out of print. The same is true of a 1993 title, The Nevada State

Does Constitution: A Reference Guide by Michael Bowers. a biology The fact that the Nevada Constitution section of the teacher Nevada teaching requirement can be put off by new arrivals can ease the need to know difficulty of recruitment, but the very existence of constitutional that requirement probably drives off a certain number law? of applicants, too. When asked if a high school biology teacher needs knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, Siegel said, “Probably not. But if you’re asking me if every person needs at least one good course in the U.S. Constitution, I would say absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s not because they are teachers but because they are citizens.” Ω

Still to come, centennial

Locals crowded around Casale family matriarch Inez Casale Stempeck to bestow hugs and take selfies. Her 90th birthday celebration was sold out at a Sparks Nugget ballroom last weekend. She was born in 1927 at the Coney Island Dairy, which was located between the Nugget and the later site of the family’s Halfway Club on Fourth Street. What is now a bar and restaurant—and a local fixture—started out as a produce stand in the late 1930s, making it one of the state’s oldest businesses.