Land measure OK’d

Gov. Jim Gibbons, Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury and property-rights activist Don Chairez gathered Thursday to celebrate their work together on legislation limiting the government’s ability to take private property.

But a backer of the ballot measure that prompted the legislation indicated that the display of unity doesn’t mean the People’s Initiative to Stop the Taking of Our Land, or PISTOL, is no more.

“I’m going to push the hell out of it, I’ll tell you,” Kermitt Waters said Thursday about the initiative. “Without PISTOL passing in 2008, they’ll just take the statute out.”

Assembly Bill 102, which Gibbons signed into law Wednesday, was the result of talks between proponents and opponents of PISTOL, which passed for the first time with 63 percent of the vote in November. Measures to amend the state constitution must pass in two successive elections to take effect.

Woodbury, who chairs the Regional Transportation Commission, led a coalition of powerful interests that opposed PISTOL, saying it would hurt the government’s ability to carry out needed public works projects.

After PISTOL passed, Woodbury negotiated a compromise plan with Chairez and Waters, PISTOL’s authors, for an alternate constitutional amendment. The compromise plan, Assembly Joint Resolution 3, passed the Legislature Thursday and must be passed by the 2009 Legislature, then approved by voters in 2010, to take effect.

Because amending the state Constitution takes several years, the Assembly bill was passed to put the same provisions into place right away.

“These provisions are in the law now,” Woodbury said Thursday. “We don’t have to wait until the people vote on PISTOL or vote on AJR3. We believe this new law, this new constitutional amendment, strikes the proper balance between property rights and the appropriate use of eminent domain.”

But PISTOL remains on the ballot in 2008 and if passed would supersede the statute created by the Assembly bill. If the legislative amendment passed a vote in 2010, it would in turn supersede PISTOL two years later.

The chief difference between the two is that PISTOL requires government to use any land that is seized within five years, whereas the legislative amendment allows 15 years.

Waters said the deal he made with Woodbury was that PISTOL’s backers wouldn’t oppose the legislative amendment if it makes the ballot in 2010. He said the Assembly bill was a victory because it was “95 percent of PISTOL.”

Asked whether he would oppose PISTOL’s second passage in 2008, Woodbury said he would make the decision with Waters. “We’ve agreed that AJR3 should ultimately be the law in the constitution instead of PISTOL,” he said. “The question is, do we all support it (PISTOL), or do we all tell the public it’s not needed? We’ll have to work that out.”

But Waters, reached in Florida en route to the Bahamas, where he said he planned to drill a “wildcat” oil well, said PISTOL was not negotiable.

“I want the public to pass PISTOL in 2008,” he said. “If the public wants to pass the other in 2010, that’s their choice.”