Opinion

Soaking nevadanS

Members of the Nevada Legislature need to return to the subject of payday lending because of Trump administration indifference, a Las Vegas law professor writes.

In a Las Vegas Sun essay, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s Benjamin Edwards wrote, “Nevada cannot rely on Washington to set policy and protect Nevada’s population. Mick Mulvaney, the Trump-appointed head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has shown little interest in policing predatory lending practices. Instead, he announced that the CFPB would focus … on ‘identifying and addressing outdated, unnecessary or unduly burdensome regulations.’”

According to Edwards, the Center for Responsible Lending in North Carolina has found that Nevada averages an annual interest rate of 652 percent, 616 percent higher than the maximum loan rate allowable for U.S. military servicemembers. There is no similar curb in federal law for non-military citizens, and state usury laws were voided by congressional action during the Carter administration.

ThiS dog will hunT

Signature gatherers have been working at Department of Motor Vehicles offices for more than a year to get signatures on pro-gun petitions (“Still petitioning,” RN&R, Sept. 28, 2017). The petitions don’t do anything. They are not initiative or referendum petitions, just general, non-binding pro-guns petitions, which has led to speculation of what the purpose is. After observing them at the Carson City office, we believe this is what is happening:

Though they initially keep voter registration materials out of sight, the signature gatherers are also deputy voter registrars. When people leave the DMV building, they are asked, “Would you like to sign a petition to secure your Second Amendment rights?”

The answer determines the political leanings of the citizens. If they say yes, then they are asked if they want to register to vote. If they say no, they are allowed to go on their way without that second question.

This is called bird dogging. It’s legal, and has been used by both Republican and Democratic precinct walkers, who learn the political stances of residents by walking door to door. After they identify some people as friendly to their candidates or party, they pass those addresses along to voter registrars, who then return to register those people. The DMV tactic allows that identification to take place quickly so no two-step procedure is necessary. The gatherers we spoke with declined to confirm the practice. —Dennis Myers

CarSON CiTY Construction on Virginia Street will keep traffic closed in one direction through February 2019.

PHOTO/JERI CHADWELL

Word on the street

Business owners talk shop amid construction

Reno’s midtown district runs along a stretch of Virginia Street that was transformed by the construction of outlying malls and other routes to those malls. By the early ’80s, Virginia Street was no longer a highway through town, which sapped business along the street. It was a surface street, bypassed by most through traffic. Some longtime businesses remained, but, over the years, parts of the street became neglected. Since the mid-2000s, however, there have been efforts to rebrand the neighborhood and revitalize business there.

These days, midtown is teeming with restaurants, bars and retail shops. And aside from a few, they’re relatively new, many established during the post-recession rebranding effort. Now, they’re preparing to keep their doors open throughout a two-year street re-construction project.

The $80 million Virginia Street Bus RAPID Transit Extension project is intended to better connect the midtown district to the University of Nevada, Reno with increased bus traffic. It’s also planned to add landscaping—including some 300 trees—and roundabouts, widen sidewalks to bring them into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and upgrade utility infrastructure in the area.

The latter is what’s underway now, and according to the Regional Transportation Commission’s website, upgrading storm drains and utilities for AT&T, Charter, NV Energy, Verizon and the Truckee Meadows Water Authority will keep a 13-block stretch of Virginia Street (between Plumb Lane and Liberty Street) closed in one direction, seven days a week, for the next five months.

During this phase of construction, northbound travelers will have the options of Plumas and Center Streets and Holcomb and Wells Avenues to get where they’re going. Southbound traffic on Virginia Street will remain open between now and February, and many drivers already know they have the options of Forrest and Plumas Streets to travel south—options they’re taking. A recent Friday afternoon walk down Forrest Street revealed heavy traffic, which several residents walking in the neighborhood stopped to say has become the norm.

Also on these residential streets, the RTC has put up signage. It goes a bit further than the “businesses open during construction” signs placed along the route of the similar Fourth Street/Prater Way Project, though the efficacy of the signs for the Virginia Street project is arguable. Drivers headed northbound on Plumas will see them, but the signs—each of which lists about a dozen businesses with an arrow pointing east down a side street—are printed in small enough lettering that it would be difficult, and probably unwise, to try reading them from a moving vehicle.

The RTC’s website lists other measures it’s taking to encourage “the community to support local businesses during construction,” including a partnership with the rideshare company Lyft.

On its website, the commission announced that beginning on Sept. 7, Lyft would provide 50 percent discounts (up to $10 off) on rides from anywhere in the community outside of midtown to anywhere in the current Virginia Street construction zone. (Use the code RAPID in the promos section of the app.) According to RTC public information officer Lauren Ball, the project contractor, Sierra Nevada Construction, worked with Lyft to help subsidize midtown-bound rides.

Another company also attempted briefly to “alleviate” midtown traffic during construction. Independent of the RTC—and apparently without notice to other government entities—the bikeshare company Lime launched 100 of its electric scooters in midtown on Sept. 18. This was met swiftly with a cease and desist order from the City of Reno, which also released a statement saying officials were “stunned and disappointed at the recent actions of Lime” and calling said actions “disingenuous and irresponsible.”

In addition to the signage on Plumb and its Lyft partnership, the