DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

When Nevada's constitution was written, state government was very different from today. Governors were considered mere administrators. Policymaking was a legislative prerogative. It was a state of affairs that remained in place in Nevada until the 1950s, and the state was later than most in departing from it.

Since then, tensions have developed between legislative and executive branches that would have been unheard of in the days of Nevada's founding.

When federal funds began flowing in unprecedented volume in the 1960s, Nevada governors found ways to create programs in spite of, and sometimes in defiance of, the Nevada Legislature.

Gov. Grant Sawyer's administration (1959-1967) found that it was possible to use federal funds to set up new state programs and have them functioning by the time the next session of the legislature met.

Sometimes these were involved programs that had never been proposed to the lawmakers. In other cases, it involved proposals the legislators had considered and rejected.

The lawmakers were then in the position of either shutting down a going concern that now had their own constituencies or looking irrelevant in comparison with the executive.

As this kind of thing became more common, the legislature set up safeguards against it. The Interim Finance Committee, a panel that distributes state funds when the full legislature is out of session, was given authority to oversee the process. But even then, the committee was always expected to show restraint when it means overriding policy decisions of the full legislature.

There's a new wrinkle in this relationship between the branches of government that is unfolding. Gov. Jim Gibbons wanted Carson City to have a homeland security "fusion center" like those planned for Clark and Washoe counties. It would have cost $651,000, but the lawmakers rejected it. Their reason was partly the cost, but they also felt a center in the state capital only 29 miles from the one in Washoe was an unnecessary luxury. A report by congressional investigators raised the same concerns. Finally, local law enforcement officials objected, saying that the extra center would diffuse authority and undermine emergency operations in urgent situations.

There the matter rested. The lawmakers went home. Unknown to them, the Gibbons administration continued looking for an extra-legislative solution. Eighteen million dollars in federal grant money was obtained, the objections of local law enforcement officials in the state were neutralized, and the money was divvyed up among the two urban emergency centers plus the unauthorized one in Carson City.

The urban centers will get $7 million. The Carson City center will get start-up money of $605,000 plus the original Gibbons request of $651,000.

That begs the question of why, if the Carson City center could have been funded with the $651,000 Gibbons requested last January, $1.3 million is now needed for the same project.

More than that, though, it poses important issues for the Interim Finance Committee.

Should the committee create a program the full legislature vetoed? The funding and local law enforcement issues have been satisfied, but those were not the only basis on which the center was defeated. If it was needless pork barrel spending in the first half of 2007, what has changed in the second half?

The original decision not to fund the center was made in the legislative budget committees. Those are the same bodies that make up the Interim Finance Committee in off-years. But more goes into policy decisions of this magnitude than funding, and for Interim Finance to create a new state facility outside the perimeters of a full legislative session means they would take a good deal on themselves. It would also reward unwillingness by the executive to accept a policy judgment of the legislative.