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Incline School District veto up before Assembly today

Geoff Dornan, Tribune News Service

The Assembly reviews former Gov. Bob Miller’s veto of the Incline Village School District bill today.

But leadership doesn’t expect the lower house will breathe new life into AB596.

Then-Assemblyman Pete Ernaut pushed the bill through at the end of the 1997 Legislature. It would have sawed off the Tahoe Basin portion of Washoe County as a new school district to satisfy complaints from Incline residents that they were getting short changed by the Reno area.



Miller vetoed it citing the “momentous policy consequences” of creating a new, special school district centered on the state’s wealthiest community and doing so at the 11th hour of the Legislature with minimal review and discussion. He said the bill could have opened Nevada’s school funding formula to court challenge.

Speaker Joe Dini, D-Yerington, said he sees no push coming to override the governor’s veto today.



To do so would take the support of at least two-thirds of the Assembly – 28 of 42 members. That would have to be followed by a similar vote of at least 14 of 21 Senators. Very few vetoes are actually overridden by the Legislature.

“I don’t see any push at Incline to revive that bill,” he said. “Nobody’s talked to me about not sustaining the governor’s veto.”

He said he thinks that’s because Washoe County School District got the message.

“I think the bill did what it was intended to and that is to wake up the Washoe School District,” said Dini. “We had to send a message because the people there (at Incline) felt they were not part of the school district.”

He said he has been told district trustees and officials are now paying more attention to the needs at Incline and that the legislature may have helped solve a problem even though that bill was vetoed.

Lobbyist Harvey Whittemore, who worked for the original proposal that would have created a Tahoe Basin school district including not only Washoe but Douglas County portions of the lake, said he too thinks the issue is moot at this point. Even after Douglas was removed from the proposal, “we were very supportive of Assemblyman Ernaut’s efforts,” Whittemore said.

He doubted there would be a fight to override the veto today.

The only other measure on the veto list is AB 512 which would have imposed special requirements, rules and qualifications on contractors who build or install residential pools or spas. That measure was drafted amid complaints about pool projects that ended up costing more and taking longer than anticipated. Most of the issue centered on problems with contractors in the Las Vegas area.

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