Ward-only voting bill may get a re-write in Carson City

CARSON CITY — A bill to require ward-by-ward voting for city council members in all of Nevada’s cities – primarily a response to how the city of Henderson elects its leaders – looks like it’s heading for reworking after getting a rough welcome in committee Tuesday.

Opposition to Assembly Bill 282 in a hearing before the Assembly Government Affairs committee came from city officials across the state – especially Henderson — who would be affected one way or another by the bill.

Sponsored by Assemblywoman Ellen Spiegel, D-Henderson, the bill would end citywide elections for council seats in all incorporated cities and require council members to be elected exclusively by voters in equal-size wards. Individual wards would have to be smaller than the average state Assembly district, currently about 64,000 people. City councils would have to have an odd number of voting members up to a maximum of nine. It would take effect in January 2023.

The changes would mean some large expanding cities, like Henderson and Las Vegas, would have to add council seats.

Spiegel said Henderson’s system of ward council members who are elected citywide meant that ward residents had seen their preferred candidates lose based on the results from other parts of the city.

“The will of my ward was overruled by people who don’t live in my ward,” she said. She added that an automated phone survey of residents she conducted had shown broad support for changing the system.

Committee members challenged her survey’s methodology. More broadly, they and other opponents questioned the state intervening in local home rule by imposing the new system.

“It’s a standing principle of the league that we oppose any bill that reduces or restricts local government autonomy,” said Wes Henderson, director of the Nevada League of Cities and Municipalities.

Further, some questioned how small cities such as Caliente, which has approximately 1,200 residents, could be effectively divided into wards.

Representatives of Carson City and Boulder City also voiced opposition. So did Las Vegas. The city already elects council members from wards but would have to add council seats to meet the bill’s ward size requirements.

But the strongest protests came from Henderson, whose officials noted previous similar measures in the Legislature that were vetoed by then-Gov. Brian Sandoval on home-rule grounds, as well as the work of multiple Henderson charter committees and prior local referendums that had sustained the current system.

The legislation “does not respect the local autonomy of our voters, our charter committee or our City Council,” said Henderson Councilman Dan Stewart.

Spiegel said she was “absolutely open” to revisiting how the plan would affect small cities but said Henderson’s protests about deciding the matter for themselves were “not credible.”

“Nothing has been stopping the city of Henderson from putting an advisory question on the ballot,” she said. “If Henderson wanted a ballot question they would have a ballot question.”

Contact Bill Dentzer at bdentzer@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-0661. Follow @DentzerNews on Twitter.