LETTER: Nevada’s female-dominated Legislature served its true constituency — big government
The June 23 Review-Journal article about Nevada’s female-majority Legislature, “We were just getting the job done,” completely ignored the primary “job” that this first in the nation female majority Legislature accomplished — namely the growth, increased empowerment and well-being of government.
So many of the women mentioned in the article have lifetime roots in government, including several who were sitting in direct violation of the Nevada Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine. Under the leadership of these women, the biggest winner in the 2019 Legislature was the institution of government itself and those inside it.
For instance:
■ Senate Bill 224, the PERS secrecy bill, is now law.
■ Senate Bill 153 wiped out the small checks enacted in 2015 on the abuses of collective bargaining. It’s now back to business as usual.
■ Senate Bill 135 gives collective bargaining rights to state employees, putting us right on track to join those other states where it is government of the government, by the government and for the government.
■ Senate Bill 287, the “right to know” bill to stop stonewalling by government bureaucracies, passed. But it should be re-labeled the “right to continue not to know” bill after its most important provisions were gutted. Right now Metro is stonewalling a Review-Journal records request.
Also, any hopes for choice in education were either crippled or eliminated. “Policing for profit,” Nevada’s civil forfeiture system, is intact, as is one of the worst systems of employment licensing in the country, denying opportunity to minorities, most of whom are women of color.
One thing can be said about the government-employee, female-dominated 2019 Legislature: It served its true constituency — government — well and imposed political, social and economic costs upon the private sector without regard to gender.
That’s “fair,” isn’t it?