by Dennis Myers
Payday loan bill enacted
Military encroachments on federally managed public lands in Nevada led to a study of impacts from military and other uses for state lands.
The Nevada Senate last week voted to contract for creation of a state database that will inform payday loan companies when loan applicants already have one or more outstanding loans and are above the debt load allowed under state law. The companies are barred by state law from extending loans that eat up more than 25 percent of an applicant’s gross income. The database would be funded with fees paid by the payday loan companies using it to the contractor running it. The bill also contains protections for military servicepeople, and was amended to give companies a waiver of liability. The companies opposed creation of the database, preferring not to know the information it will meke available to them. The vote was straight party-line. Every Democrat voted for the bill. Every Republican voted against it, some of them arguing that the fee to pay for the database should fall under a state constitutional provision requiring a two thirds vote to raise revenue. Among Washoe County legislators, only Julia Ratti supported the measure. Ben Kieckhefer, Ira Hansen and Heidi Seevers Gansert voted against it.
PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS
Senate hearS dubiouS info During debate last week on Senate Bill 179, dealing with abortion, Washoe County Sen. Ira Hansen said, “There’s a real change going on in America right now because so many young people are being exposed to ultrasounds and the younger people, interestingly enough, are the most pro-life people in America today.” Hansen did not give a source for his assertion, but most surveys show younger citizens are the most supportive of abortion rights. In a Gallup survey released on June 15 last year, adults 18 to 49 call themselves “pro-choice.” Forty-nine is where the shift in sentiment occurs—those 50 and above identify as “prolife.” Here are the percentages up to that point: Between ages 18 and 29, respondents were 56-38 percent in favor of abortion. Within the age 30 to 49 cohort, respondents supported abortion 51-45 percent. Sen. Hansen also said in his remarks, “I’d also point out that we’re going the opposite direction in some parts of the country, legalizing infanticide, flat out murder.” Again, he was not specific. However, a law enacted recently in New York and laws proposed in Virginia and Rhode Island have been characterized as leading to infanticide, which they do not. The chair of New York’s Conservative Party, for instance, claimed that under terms of the new Reproductive Health Act (RHA) in that state, “If the baby was born alive, they would just let the baby expire.” The conservative magazine National Review ran an article headlined “New York, Virginia Abortion Laws: Infanticide Craze.” (The headline incorrectly describes the Virginia proposal as a law. It is a proposal.) But the fact-checking site Politifact found upon investigation that the RHA removed duplicative language from existing law. That still leaves intact state and federal laws—including U.S. Public Law 107–207, 116 Stat. 926—requiring that “infants born alive are due the same medical care and protections as anyone else.”
—Dennis Myers
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04.25.19
Land rush There are hazards in federal withdrawals last week, u.S. rep. Mark amodei was in-state and spoke to a joint session of the Nevada Legislature. Among other things, he said: “This Congress represents a unique opportunity for Nevada, a Nevada opportunity. When you live in a state that is 85 percent owned by the federal government—which is not a good thing or bad thing, it is simply a fact—then what happens with multiple use of federal land is pretty important when you talk economic development, when we talk about conservation, when we talk about transportation, when we talk about anything and everything, wildfire, you name it. What is new about this one? For three major reasons, this is going to be a different one. In the 116th Congress, the United States Navy is going to come with what is the largest lands bill in the history of the state. About 600,000 acres, already owned by the federal government, are going to be changed from multiple use to not multiple use.
… The United States Air Force in the southern part of the state is going to be coming with not quite as big a footprint, but it is expansion time for our war fighters that fly airplanes in the Navy and in the Air Force. OK, that is fine. But the process that we go through with that … this is an opportunity. When you talk about essentially a lands withdrawal that affects transportation, that affects economic development, that affects conservation, that affects wilderness, that affects everything under the sun that we do in this state, it is an opportunity, ladies and gentlemen.” This is the traditional view of the process that was common in Nevada in the 1950s and ’60s, before local activism asserted environmental and anti-nuclear concerns. In those earlier days, there was some faith that the federal government and business would deal with the state fairly. But time and experience have taken a toll on that faith. What were once seen as opportunities are now often seen
as occasions to be on guard. In this Earth Day week, it might be useful to recall some of the times the state’s faith was rewarded in some ways but also came with downsides and the discovery of information which had been withheld from Nevadans. On Aug. 19, 1970, for instance, in a statement to the U.S. Environmental Quality Council, the Atomic Energy Commission—a forerunner of the U.S. Energy Department—said that as a result of its weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site, 250 square miles were contaminated by plutonium whose radioactivity can linger for 24,000 years or more and that 49 separate areas were fenced off because of the intensity of contamination. The AEC had not only not previously informed the state of this—and certainly had not done so before the state consented to the establishment of the test site—but it had spent years denying the dangers of fallout. Nevada Gov. Paul Laxalt, taken by surprise at the AEC statement, nevertheless immediately declared his confidence in the public’s safety, though a news report said he had yet to be briefed on the development by the AEC. That kind of blind faith, too, was common in those days. The federal government has installed some of its own functions on large swaths of public lands in Nevada—Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and the Pentagon. But the military use is different from the others. The others are available for the public to use. When the Pentagon takes control of public land, it is “withdrawn”— removed from public use.
lonG tiMe coMinG During the Carter administration effort to install MX missile installations in Nevada and Utah, an Air Force officer called the Nevada desert a “great nuclear sponge.” That view of the Great Basin leads to federal policy-making that utilizes the basin as a dumping ground for unattractive and dangerous projects. That view is also frequently not informed of the delicate ecology of desert terrain.
