9 minute read
NEWS
from Oct. 11, 2018
Whazzat?
Asked for his position on the danger of Nevada becoming like California, an “issue” in the governor’s race, Gov. Brian Sandoval told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “I honestly don’t know what that means.”
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Fee Fight
In Nye County, the county government has been collecting money from marijuana shops in unincorporated towns.
Former Amargosa Valley Town Board member John Bosta read the statute that covers the matter and felt the county’s action in collecting the taxes and fees violates the law. The county disagreed and continued the practice.
The legislative counsel—lawyer to the Nevada Legislature—has now issued an opinion taking Bosta’s side. The county is mulling over the opinion. However, opinions issued by the legislative counsel are not binding on public agencies. They get their legal advice from elected district attorneys, the state attorney general or counsel of their own.
Bosta has quite a history. He’s currently in court challenging state water law on the basis of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought what is now Nevada into the union—and he organized an effort that led to an elected instead of appointed Amargosa town board.
Musk helps shareholders
On Aug. 7, Tesla exec Elon Musk tweeted, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured,” prompting a frenzy in Tesla shares that got worse with three other Musk tweets egging the market on. The Securities and Exchange Commission was not amused, filing a Sept. 27 suit to have Musk removed as chair and CEO of Tesla, bar him from heading any publicly traded company and impose fines. Shares were in a tailspin.
There was a reported settlement of a $10 million fine, with Musk keeping his CEO gig but stepping down as chair for two years, a settlement the Tesla board rejected.
A day later, a repentant board made contact with the SEC seeking a new deal. That deal, as finally drafted, included Musk departing as chair for three years and paying a $20 million fine, plus the corporation paying its own $20 million fine and adding two independent—independent, presumably, of Musk—directors to the board and an independent chair. Oh, and the corporation would curb Musk’s communications, including his use of social media.
Before the day was out, Musk tweeted a shot at the SEC: “Just want to [sic] that the Shortseller Enrichment Commission is doing incredible work. And the name change is so on point!” Shares nosedived again.
He kept tweeting into the night, and shares kept falling.
The settlement still needs court approval, and Tesla is seeking a new chair, being described variously in financial news reports as a manager, babysitter and an adult. Clark County Assemblymember John Hambrick touts his crime stance on his website.
PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS
Running for sheriff
Nevada’s still locking them up
a think tank—this time the Crime and Justice Institute—has told Nevada what it has known for decades. The state puts more people in prison than, well, almost anywhere.
The study, the latest in a long line of such studies, was commissioned by the State of Nevada.
On one occasion in the 1990s, a U.S. Department of Justice survey indicated that Nevada taxpayers pay more per capita than any in the nation for their prison costs.
At another point, Nevada Supreme Court Justice Charles Springer, then a member of an in-state study panel, said the state imprisons at a higher rate than any known government in human history.
Yet it is seldom an issue in state political campaigns. Rather, it’s likely that such campaigns are a factor in driving Nevada’s high rate of incarceration, since state legislative and even judgeship candidates run on “tough on crime” platforms.
For decades, and particularly since the turbulent 1960s, state legislators have regularly enacted laws creating new crimes, increasing penalties to existing crimes, and making parole more difficult to get.
Paradoxically, criminal justice experts say these steps seldom contribute to reducing repeat offenses. But then, that may not be the purpose of these laws. The purpose may be political, and, if so, it seems to work admirably, continuing to drive the enactment of more and more such laws.
In one judgeship campaign against incumbent Tom O’Donnell in Clark County in 1975, rough television commercials accused O’Donnell of being soft on crime. While the camera panned over a list of names, the narrative went, “These are the rapists, robbers, murderers and thieves put back on our streets to terrorize.”
In that case, O’Donnell survived and was reelected. Not all candidates are so lucky. And many of those who go through such campaigns get the message, and it affects their performance in office.
There has been one technique that helped slow the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on these measures. The state in the late 1980s and early ’90s was nearly at a point where it would be building a prison a year.
That was when Republican Sue Wagner and Democrat Robert Sader became chairs of the two legislative judiciary committees—Sader in the Assembly, Wagner in the Senate.
Until then, each tough-on-crime bill had been scrutinized individually. There was no cumulative assessment of all the criminal justice bills in a legislative session to determine their fiscal impact.
Sader and Wagner held all the measures as a group so their committees could examine the cost to taxpayers of the pieces of legislation together. Wagner said the state’s criminal justice practices “ate up a lot of money that could be spent better on education or a variety of other things.”
“It was the first time anybody had ever really done anything to try to systematically figure out what impact this was going to have,” she said in her 2005 oral history. “Before then, everybody said, ‘Oh, good, it’s going to go from a misdemeanor to a felony.’ Well, that’s like going from a county jail to the state prison system. In addition to that, if you go from a misdemeanor to a gross misdemeanor to a felony, there are all these other implications, and people don’t think about that. They just think that they want to be tougher than the next person.”
Sader said the impact of the cumulative assessment was that the state was able to avoid building one planned prison.
The technique was successful enough that it was assumed, in some circles, that it would be continued. But Wagner was elected lieutenant governor, and Sader retired from legislative service. And turnover both in population and in office-holding in Nevada is such that institutional memory is severely lacking. The legislative staff did not inform new lawmakers of previous practices in running committees. Mark James, who later chaired Senate Judiciary, said he had never heard
of the Wagner/Sader practice. As a result, lawmakers returned to assessing each bill for its fiscal impact individually.
In this year’s election, while there are a few campaigns using tough-on-crime rhetoric, most candidates are unusually restrained in such verbiage. Most campaign websites focus more on day-to-day concerns of voters like schools and taxes, which may bode well for the kind of bills that will be introduced at the 2019 legislature.
The Crime and Justice Institute has one finding that is striking—that the number of women in prison is on the rise. Though the percent of women in Nevada prisons is still low, it is rising quickly—39 percent in the last decade.
Of even greater concern is why they are there. CJI analyst Alison Silveira told the Nevada Commission on the Administration of Justice last month that almost 80 percent of women in prison are there for non-violent offenses, and about half of them have mental health problems. In addition, about half of them have no previous felonies.
The difficulties candidates face in navigating these issues can be seen in a reader comment posted by a David Depp on a Nevada Appeal report about Silveira’s testimony: “Street criminals and thugs are no longer scared of the court system as they know if they are arrested, they will be out of jail quickly, no matter how many dozens of times they have been arrested for a felony. They have been emboldened and are more dangerous than ever. We need tough-on-crime judges and sentencing to the max
A lack of and no more plea deals— tell me you’re guilty, institutional and I’ll give you a fine and send you on your memory was a way. Arrest, convict, incarcerate. Save our neighborhoods and the pitfall. lives of the addicts. Elect hard-on-crime judges. Don’t believe them—look at their records.” One interesting feature of the CJI report is a flow chart that shows the rise of Nevada incarcerations. The chart lacks vertical grids, but it appears that from about 2007 to 2014 the state’s behavior changed. Incarcerations fell from about 2007 to 2009, then rose—but at a lower rate of increase than normal—until about 2013. Then it fell again for about a year. The report does not account for this anomaly. Ω
Full circle
A prayer circle was held in front of the Reno federal building on Oct. 8 to mark Indigenous People’s Day, a commemoration begun by the American Indian Movement. The crowd numbered about 60. Last year, the Nevada Legislature approved an amended measure to make Indigenous People’s Day a day of observance in Nevada, though it designated Aug. 9 for the purpose. As originally introduced, the commemoration would have replaced Columbus Day on Oct. 8.
Recycling Guide
Find out where to recycle or properly dispose of unwanted items in the Truckee Meadows.
Businesses may charge for disposal services or will only take commercial customers. Please call individual businesses for details.
Visit us at ktmb.org/recycle for our
more extensive guide!
BOOKS
Big Brothers Big Sisters 8262122 Washoe County Libraries
CARPET
Habitat for Humanity 323-5511 Gone Green 525-1447
CARTRIDGES-PRINTER
Target locations Office Max locations
CD/DVD/VHS PLAYERS
Gospel Mission 323-7999 NV Recycling 888-9888
CELLPHONES
CLOTHING
H&M locations St. Vincent’s 322-7073
ANTIFREEZE
Reno Drain Oil Service 3420351 H2O Environmental 351-2237
APPLIANCES
BATTERIES-HOUSEHOLD
COMPUTERS
Computer Corps 883-2323 New2U Computers 329-1126
CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL
Empire Waste Systems 831-2246 Rubbish Runners 376-6162
ELECTRONIC WASTE
Intelligent Lifecycle Solutions 391-1319 New2U Computers 329-1126 Western Metals Recycling 3588880
HOUSEHOLD HAZARDOUS WASTE
H2O Environmental 351-2237
LIGHT BULBS-CFL bulbs
Home Depot locations H2O Environmental 351-2237
MEDICAL WASTE
Washoe County Health District 328-2434
MERCURY
OIL
Kragen Auto Parts 853-8770 Jiffy Lube 747-7111
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
Reno Police Dept. 334-2175 Join Together Nevada 324-7557
SCRAP METAL
Schnitzer Steel 331-2267
TELEVISIONS
TIRES
Big O Tire 525-9381 Tires Plus 525-9381
BIKES
Reno Bike Project 323-4488 Kiwanis Bike Program 3371717
FOOD WASTE
Down to Earth Composting 476-2332
GAS CANISTERS (for camping stoves)
Illegal Dumping
Report illegal dumping by calling (775) 329-DUMP (3867) or through Washoe County Sheriff’s Office mobile APP: WCSO
Washoe County Apartment Residents
Drop off recyclables (glass, cans, plastic, bottles, newspaper, phone books, office paper, & cardboard) at Waste Management Recycle America Stations: 1100 E. Commercial Row, Reno 1455 E. Greg. St., Sparks KTMB’s recycling guide is generously funded by:
Want to be in KTMB’s Recycling Guide?
Please call us at 775-851-5185 or email us at staff@ktmb.org
