The ’people’s legislature’ is uncivil and unfriendly stoRy & PHotos By DENNIS MYERS
People used to call the Nevada Legislature a “people’s legislature.” In 1977, for instance, the Los Angeles Times reported that a railroad conductor oversaw the billion-dollar state budget in the Nevada Assembly, then went on, “Three other assemblymen are carpenters, three are electricians, and one is a railroad brakeman. There are two housewives, a motel operator, a liquor store owner, two ranchers, four insurance men, five real estate men, an optometrist, three college professors, three teachers, a radio news reporter, a retired high school principal and a preacher.” This sort of thing was always overstated. The Assembly speaker in 1977 was a casino owner, for example, and other key figures were power players. Moreover, it was less the jobs people did than the casual, informal routine that made the Nevada Legislature a people’s place. Simply walking uninvited onto the Assembly or Senate floor and talking to one’s legislators was a symbol of it. The public was welcome in the building then. The term “people’s legislature” is seldom heard anymore. Getting elected to the Nevada Legislature costs big money, not the kind of thing someone unconnected to money networks is likely to raise. Nor are trappings of legislative sessions as simple and welcoming as they once were. The politics, once relatively down-to-earth, have become cutthroat, as in Congress. It is still possible to get into the legislature in some districts for a song and a prayer, but generally those legislators are not particularly influential. And the legislative routine is now hostile to “the people.” OPINION
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NEWS
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GREEN
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FEATURE STORY
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ARTS&CULTURE
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The building is the Nevada capitol. That’s something that is little understood. The old building to the north, where the legislature used to meet, is invariably referred to by the term capitol. But a capitol is, by definition, where the representative legislative assemblies meet. Capitol—Merriam-Webster: “the building in which the people who make the laws of a U.S. state meet”; Oxford: “a building housing a legislative assembly”; Random House: “a building occupied by a legislature.”
That’s no longer a problem. Not only were there committee rooms in the new building, but the lawmakers later expanded the structure to the rear, essentially adding another four-story building to the back. The also bought a nearby bank building for staff space and built a parking garage, displacing a park. The original legislative building was 96,000 square feet, the expansion is 90,000 or 94,000, depending on who told it. There was staff talk in 2005 of acquiring the nearby Capital Apartments and of tearing down the bank building—now called the Sedway Office Building—for parking, but Sen. William Raggio put an end to that. (Raggio to staff: “We spent all that money to fix the Sedway Building, and now you want to tear it down?”)
The committee room designs tell a tale.
Req u es ts yo u R PRes eN c e The difference between the committee rooms in the first building and the later committee meeting rooms in the expansion pretty much tells the story of this legislature’s evolution. The first committee rooms generally had one or two doors that provided entrance and exit for both citizens and legislators together. The newer committee rooms have two sets of doors—one set for the “NO WELCOME MAT” legislators at the back, continued on page 14 the other for citizens. Lawmakers no longer
When the legislature met in the new building for the first time, in 1971, it was three stories high and some people made a fuss that legislators—or some of them—would get private offices. Until then, in the old capitol, legislators had desks and that was all. There were no hearing rooms and sometimes finding space for a committee to meet was a challenge.
ART OF THE STATE
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FOODFINDS
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FILM
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MUSICBEAT
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NIGHTCLUBS/CASINOS
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THIS WEEK
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MISCELLANY
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MARCH 5, 2015
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RN&R
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