NEws

Survey of u.S. voter enthuSiaSm pollS

African American voters UP

Young African American voters UP MORE

Asian Americans UP

Swing state voters UP

Democratic women TURBOCHARGED (Politico’s term) Gain from Kavanaugh dispute:

Republicans UP

Democrats UP MORE

Young voters DOWN

This could be the rare midterm when turnout rises. In the last midterm election, Nevada turnout was 29 percent of eligible voters. Q3 goeS negative

With environmentalists now pushing hard for the defeat of the deregulating ballot Question 3, supporters of the measure have gone heavily negative with attacks on NV Energy, the regulated monopoly that supplies most of Nevada with power.

Journalists around the state get lots of news releases with titles like “NV Energy’s Campaign Tells Biggest Lies Yet.”

A wraparound in the Oct. 21 Reno Gazette Journal carried this quote, allegedly from the Clark County Education Association: “NV Energy has leveraged their monopoly power to overcharge the Clark County School District by millions of dollars every year.”

NV Energy did not comment on the charge, but the Washoe County School District and Nevada State Education Association oppose Question 3. heller’S Switch getS noticed

The Wall Street Journal this week carried a story headlined “Nevada’s GOP Senator Bets on His Conversion to Trumpism.” It began:

“No Republicans on the ballot in 2018 have shifted their Trump-era political allegiances more than Nevada Sen. Dean Heller. Mr. Heller never endorsed President Trump’s 2016 campaign and declared himself ‘99 percent against Trump.’ During Mr. Trump’s first months in office, Mr. Heller called a press conference to announce his opposition to the Republican health care overhaul Mr. Trump promised.

“Then ...” nevada duckS ag Search

Thirty-five states have entered a competition for 700 jobs the U.S. Agriculture Department wants to export from D.C.

Nevada is not among them. An Oct. 22 USDA statement said the department “has received 136 expressions of interest from parties in 35 states interested in becoming the new homes of the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). … The entities expressing interest in hosting EFS and NIFA include educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, state development agencies, county development agencies, municipalities, and for-profit entities.”

—Dennis Myers

Democratic nominee for governor Steve Sisolak in Reno with supporters Kevan (center) and Monique Laxalt.

PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS

Growth

Candidates don’t talk much about coping

in 1978, in a spectacularly bad example of local planning, six casinos opened in Reno within weeks of each other. These included the massive MGM Grand Hotel—now Grand Sierra Resort—which became a symbol of the resulting deterioration of Reno’s quality of life.

Publicity of the hotel boom across the nation brought numerous job seekers into Reno. The newcomers could work as many jobs as they wanted, but soon there was no place to live. People were living in their cars or at roadside rests on Interstate 80 or on dirt roads outside the city proper. If they were able to find housing, the rents were sky high. A bond issue had to be rushed through to expand the suddenly strained sewage treatment plant. Traffic overwhelmed existing configurations. Developers bought up laundromats to get the water connections.

As it happened, 1978 was also the year of a governor’s race in Nevada, and both Democrat Robert Rose and Republican Robert List addressed the difficulties the Truckee Meadows faced during the campaign.

When the election was over and winning Republican Robert List took office, he established a Commission on the Future of Nevada to address some of the problems raised by the negative effects of growth.

In 2018, however, the candidates have barely mentioned the failings of the state’s economic development efforts and the unfavorable impact of Tesla and other sudden large workforces on Washoe County’s quality of life.

Neither Democrat Steve Sisolak nor Republican Adam Laxalt have offered much about how they would deal with high rents and the unavailability of housing in Washoe. The National Association of Realtors in February ranked Reno second only to San Jose in the rate of home price increases.

After Laxalt issued a paper on economic development, the Republican Governors’ Association—which is trying to get Laxalt elected in Nevada— put out a news release that quoted the Nevada Independent: “Sisolak, his general election opponent, has not released a similarly detailed economic development plan.”

Perhaps the best response to that is, “Neither has Laxalt.” What the Republican nominee has called his economic development plan is not a bit detailed. It is 737 words long, about as long as a high school essay. The section on housing is 42 words long, if the heading is included, and reads, in its entirety:

“Reduce barriers that limit Nevadans’ access to affordable houeing. Nevada’s housing market has seen marked volatility in recent years, but the state is again growing, and housing prices have soared to the point that affordability has been strained, particularly in Northern Nevada.”

If the barriers referenced are volatility and housing prices, the 42 words do not contain a hint of how Laxalt would deal with them. His paper describes the problem, not solutions.

And while education is mentioned more often (six times) in the plan, it never gets around to answering one of the principal questions that has been repeatedly raised during this campaign: How will Laxalt both repeal the commerce tax and keep education spending at the same level, both of which he has promised to do?

Nor have either Sisolak or Laxalt offered any sense of what guidelines they will follow when handling demands for corporate welfare to lure business. Sisolak seems to have a comfort level with the concept, given his support of the Raiders stadium, but Laxalt has not provided even that much information on his stance.

neighborS

Lance Gilman, owner of Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) where Tesla is based and a GOP Storey county commissioner, has endorsed Sisolak, which may send a message all its own. Gilman was involved in luring Tesla to TRIC in Storey County without showing much anxiety over the impact it would have on housing, traffic, sewage, water and other factors in neighboring counties, which are bedroom communities for Tesla workers.

Gilman told Ray Hagar in the Fernley Reporter that he considered Sisolak the logical successor to Gov. Brian Sandoval: “I can’t say enough about Sandoval and his support for us. Tesla is here because of Sandoval and his efforts, and supporting us … with Switch and even Google. And there is only one candidate in our opinion that has the appetite, commitment, capabilities and background to continue that financial investment and vision for economic diversification and

growth. … Gov. Sandoval wanted a spokesman to bring in for the stadium in Las Vegas and the football team, the Raiders. So when that issue became an opportunity, it was Steve Sisolak that the governor selected to lead that committee to capture that opportunity.”

Sandoval and the Nevada Legislature were so desperate for the jobs Tesla would bring that they offered more corporate welfare than the corporation wanted while failing to insist on provisions for housing and other quality of life factors. It was much the way the 1970s Reno City Council asked only that the city animal shelter be moved and that public access to the river be preserved as the price of building the MGM.

No one could say the Truckee Meadows was not warned what was coming with Tesla. In 2015, a study commissioned by the Economic Planning Indicator Committee looked at the implications of projected local population growth by 2019 from 42,400 to 64,700.

Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada president and CEO Mike Kazmierski told the Reno Gazette Journal, “I actually think some of those numbers are conservative. We’re going to need 5,000 new homes each year and have to build new schools to support this growth.”

But local builders did not have the homes ready when the Tesla plant began operating. Far from it. Perry Di Loreto of Di Loreto Homes said, “I don’t believe we can build 5,000 homes each year.” Reno City Councilmember Jenny Brekhus said earlier this year, “That is a critique I have of [Gov. Brian] Sandoval—he did economic development on steroids to get the state out of the recession but ignored local government and school districts’ ability to accommodate growth propelled by his policies.” She said she thought that growth impacts would be a major issue in

Candidates for this year’s governor’s race. They have not been. governor are List recalls that during his close-mouthed on growth impacts. campaign for governor, he was asked about the impact of growth frequently enough that he cut a television commercial devoted to “growth and the impact it was having.” It was filmed at his family’s ranch in Washoe Valley, and at the end of the commercial he was leaning against a fence post and said, as he slammed the gate closed, “We’re going to close the gate on reckless development.” “Growth and expansion of the community, demands for infrastructure was a big part of the campaign,” List said last week. Ω The Laxalt economic development plan can be read at https:// tinyurl.com/y8y8fpv3

And counting

At a banquet marking the 125th anniversary of the student newspaper sagebrush at the University of nevada, reno, former editors Tom Wixon (left, 1969-70), Buddy Frank (center, 1972-73) and Michael Graham (1971-72) reminisced. The newspaper began publication on Oct. 19, 1893 as the student record, and since 1910 its name has taken various configurations that all included the word sagebrush.

Four claims

RenoElections.com and its platform

RenoElections.org, a website that has generated a lot of comment during the general election campaign, has used a decidedly old-style method of getting its message out—a postcard measuring 6-by-11 inches mailed to local households. The postcard calls the RenoElections group “nonpartisan,” which is a little like calling the Republican National Convention nonpartisan. RenoElections has a hard right point-of-view.

The four claims the postcard makes under the heading “Reno’s Report Card” are as follows:

“Reno’s national crime rating is a ‘F.’ ”

This rating is attributed—in very small type—to a website called AreaVibes. com. That site does indeed give Reno an F, but it provides no substantiation at all. No sources are given for figures cited. AreaVibes also gives Reno a B-minus for housing at a time when housing is extremely difficult to find and rents are out of sight, and Reno employment gets a D at a time when joblessness is at only 4.5 percent and at a time when Reno is gaining jobs faster than the state as a whole. AreaVibes is not a credible source.

“Our public schools are rated the worst in the U.S.”

This is false and is not supported by the citation listed, again, in very small type—a Reno Gazette Journal news story by Sam Gross, which did not even mention Reno. His story reported on the standing of state, not city schools. Washoe County schools, which include Reno, have for many years posted better results than the rest of the state. Washoe high schools are normally listed in the U.S. News and World Report survey of the state’s top high schools, and last December the Las Vegas Review Journal reported that, as usual, “In Washoe County, for example, 42 percent of the county’s 19 middle schools will receive four- or five-star ratings, compared with only 26 percent of Clark County’s 66 middle schools.”

“Reno’s homeless problem is out of control.”

This finding by RenoElections is attributed in small type to a cozy source—an essay written by Paul White, who manages the website RenoElections.org. In other words, this website is its own source for this assertion. But let’s assume it is accurate. The homeless problem in most cities in the United States is out of control and has been since the early 1980s when President Reagan and a bipartisan group in Congress—Republicans and blue dog Democrats—removed the safety net of social services that had existed since the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, from mental health to nutrition. Until the 1980s, the U.S. did not have a large homeless class, and a small Salvation Army shelter in Reno handled the problem. The postcard does not propose any way for local municipalities to solve this national problem.

“Reno’s city debt is over 700 million.”

OK. Now what? Every city has debt, as does nearly every family. Bought a car or have a mortgage? RenoElections does not allege that there is anything wrong with this, such as the city not having the assets to meet its debt or that its pension and retiree healthcare costs are too great to cover the debt. Rather, it throws out a big figure and lets it rest there. Thanks for the info, folks.

In fact, the city has at least twice done what amounted to a refinancing of its debt from the train trench, a practice which is less than financially healthy, and RenoElections could have made an issue of that. But it did not do that kind of homework. It just grabbed alarmist figures and threw them into the public bloodstream without providing any scrutiny or context for those figures. Ω

The postcard sent out by RenoElections.

PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS