By Scott thomaS anderSon
Building for sale The Reno Gazette-Journal is going to place its building for sale, and will outsource its printing to the Swift Communications’ Sierra Nevada Media Group (SNMG) in Carson City. This is where several local newspapers are printed, including the Nevada Appeal, Northern Nevada Business Weekly, and, oddly enough, the Reno News & Review. Via email, SNMG’s Robert Sperry told an RN&R staffer that he didn’t foresee any confidentiality problems arising from two newspapers from the same market printing in the same facility. “I assure you there will be no such problems,” he wrote. “We are pretty well versed in printing competing publications at Lake Tahoe, in Bishop and Mammoth Lakes, etc.” The RG-J announced the sale via an article in its own pages as well as by press release. “The decision was made to create operational efficiencies and as a result of Carson City’s newer equipment, color capabilities will increase, giving advertisers more options.” said RG-J President Ryan Kedzierski in the release. Neither the article in the RG-J nor the press release mentioned how many, if any, potential layoffs might result from the change. Current RG-J employees said they were not allowed to comment on record about the move. And despite being listed in the press release as the contact for “media inquiries,” Kedzierski did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
–Brad Bynum
Bilingual reno In February, the City of Reno launched a bilingual communications plan, beginning with Spanish and English versions of a TV commercial, Spanish social media pages and a Spanishlanguage web page. “Over a quarter of our population is Latino,” said City Council member Oscar Delgado. “A big segment is Spanishspeaking only.” “There’s an opportunity [for Spanish-speakers] to be part of boards and committees,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know that they can get involved.” “Another big one for us is just constantly making sure they’re aware of any public safely issue taking place,” he added. In the case of a shooting, for example, accurate information in Spanish is now disseminated quickly via the city’s social media pages. “We’re going to be really active on Twitter and Facebook,” Delgado said. Additional plans include distributing Spanish versions of some of the City’s printed materials and possibly hiring more Spanish-speaking employees. For more information, see “City of Reno en Español” on Facebook, visit www.reno.gov/residents/espanol, or use the Twitter hashtag #creemosreno.
–Kris Vagner
Time saver It’s almost time to set your clocks forward—again. Daylight Saving Time begins at 2 a.m., March 12. If you’ve ever wondered why we keep up this tradition—which was first implemented on a national scale by the German Empire in 1916—the answer is simple. Getting rid of Daylight Saving Time would require an act of Congress. It’s something a lot of states are petitioning for. Multiple states, including Nevada, have sent resolutions to Congress and the Oval Office asking for an end to the biyearly time travel that leads to many of us to be late or—worse yet—early when we forget to reset our clocks.
–Jeri Chadwell-singley
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03.09.17
California’s Lake Berryessa, near Winters, is one of thousands of pristine pieces of BLM land that is open to the public across the United States.
Land grab Nevada Republicans want to claim millions of acres of federally protected land Clad in jeans and a lumberjack’s flannel, biology professor Joe Medeiros combs through reams of documents about the Center for Sierra Nevada Studies in Rocklin, California. Outside, a storm thrashes trees and hammers diamonds on the pavement, symbolic of the changing weather in Washington, D.C. Congressional Republicans changed House rules earlier this year to make it easier for states to seize control of federal lands, opening the door to the sell-off of protected wildlife habitats and sprawling natural monuments. Days after the congressional move, Utah became embroiled in a political firefight when one of its elected officials introduced a bill calling for federal authorities to liquidate 3.3 million acres of public land. Medeiros, of Sierra College, oversees a major archive on the destruction of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. The pristine landscape lost its federal protection in 1923 so a reservoir could be built to fuel Bay Area expansion. The latest developments in Washington, D.C., have conservationists worried history might repeat itself across the West. “There is very little awareness that Hetch Hetchy was part of a national park,” Medeiros observed. “It was a raging fight at the time, with hundreds of editorials written from coast to coast. But now the awareness has just fallen away.”
The risk is high for Nevada. The new push to transfer and sometimes privatize federal property started Jan. 3, when congressional Republicans passed a resolution that could potentially compel the Department of the Interior to give its lands over to states without getting budgetary compensation. The vote has been viewed by some analysts as Western-state Republicans trying to revive the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion,” a movement in the 1970s to weaken federal control over vast expanses of terrain. By 1980, the Sagebrush Rebellion had a new figurehead in President Ronald Reagan, though it eventually tapered off when the great communicator appointed a moderate to run the Interior Department, and the Supreme Court ruled against a Colorado rancher’s challenge to federal stewardship. Following the House of Representatives’ January vote, Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah immediately introduced House Resolution 621 calling for the federal government to sell off several million acres of land across 10 states to “nonfederal entities.” By Feb. 2, Chaffetz was reaching out to Utah’s largest newspaper to announce he’d changed his mind, after his office was reportedly flooded with angry messages, including from constituents in the hunting and fishing communities. Nevertheless, nature enthusiasts and
sportsmen alike are worried a legislative genie is out of the bottle, one that could surface anywhere in the 334 million acres of land under federal protection. If employees for the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forestry Service or the national parks share those concerns, they can no longer say so, since President Donald Trump issued, in his second week in office, a gag order on their ability to communicate with the public. One person who can talk is Carl Rountree. He recently retired from the BLM after 35 years of service that included acting as the assistant director of its Natural Conservation System. Rountree thinks that any public lands that haven’t already been designated by Congress as “wilderness areas” are the most likely spots to be targeted. According to the Congressional Research Service, the federal government currently protects 28 percent of the land in the United States. By contrast, BLM reports note that only 3 percent of land in the Lower 48 enjoys the special wilderness designation. So, even if Republicans leave wilderness areas untouched, the vast majority of the public’s open space could be up for grabs. “It’s not that this new rule change completely opens the door to state and private ownership, but it certainly addresses a stumbling block that was there before, and it makes the process less complicated,” Rountree said. The change in House rules was a boost for Nevada Republican Rep. Mark Amodei, who introduced H.R. 1484 last year, calling for 9 million acres of land operated by the BLM and Forest Service to be transferred to the state in two phases. Critics say the language of the bill actually opens the door for Nevada to annex nearly all federal land in its borders during the second phase. The bill would also allow Nevada to use any newly acquired lands for generating state revenue, specifically by leasing them to schools, colleges and hospitals or selling them to private interests. Amodei has continued to push for his bill to get a hearing in Congress, and, unlike Chaffetz in Utah, he has strong political allies in Nevada. Gov. Brian Sandoval and Sen. Dean Heller both have endorsed the deal, while Nevada Republicans in the Legislature passed a resolution supporting it. Shaaron Netherton, who spent 22 years working for the BLM before
