State Senate Passes Bill To Change OPD Board

The Nevada State Senate voted unanimously on April 15, to approve legislation to add two new seats to the Overton Power District (OPD) Board of Directors. The bill, SB 124, also would make changes to the way that OPD voting districts may be re-apportioned in the future.

When the Overton Power District #5 was created in 1935 it had five board members. One member was elected from each of the five communities in the district: Logandale, Overton, Moapa, Bunkerville and Mesquite. Those districts are still in place today.

But since that time the distribution of population has shifted. Census documents indicate that the population of the city of Mesquite is approaching 20,000 people. According to some counts, that is nearly twice the population living in all the rest of the district combined. Thus the City of Mesquite brought the issue to the state legislature seeking what they called a greater position of equity on the OPD board. “In keeping with the fundamentals of the representative democracy that we live in, we would just like to see more representation to better reflect our population,” said Mesquite City Manager Tim Hacker.

SB 124 would add two new seats to the OPD Board. The first member would represent another district in the City of Mesquite. The second would be elected at-large by all the residents of the district. Both of the new board members would be chosen at the next general election in November, 2010.

The five existing seats on the board would remain as is.

One amendment proposed for the bill early on; considered to bve a hurdle for both OPD and the City; was not included in the final bill. This proposed amendment would have changed the way that board vacancies are filled in districts like OPD. Currently, if a vacancy comes up in the board of the OPD district, the board has 30 days to appoint a new board member. After the 30 days, the appointment goes to the Board of County Commissioners. Under the amendment that was proposed, however, it would go to the Commissioners to fill any and all board vacancies that came up. Neither the OPD or the City of Mesquite liked this idea. The proposed amendment never appeared in the final language of the bill.

A large section in the existing law dealing with how voting areas in a district may be re-apportioned was removed from the Nevada Revised Statute by the bill.

Under the current law, a petition may be made and signed by 10% of the voters to create or change areas of the district. That petition could be submitted to the Board of County Commissioners who would then hold public hearings and decide on the issue. The Commissioners could then make changes to the voting districts.

All of this language was struck out of the bill. Thus, the only way to make changes to the voting areas in a district would be to go to the State Legislature. “In my mind that is a good thing,” said OPD General Manager Delmar Leatham. “What it does is it cements the changes that have been agreed to in this bill.”

Now that it has passed the Senate, the bill will go to the State Assembly for further consideration.