How Assembly election may affect the Board of Supervisors, Nugget Project
Submitted by admin on Tue, 08/31/2010 - 10:33am
There is a unique situation on the Carson City Board of Supervisors this year, with two of its members facing each other in the race for the District 40 Assembly seat.
Since either Democrat Robin Williamson or Republican Pete Livermore is almost guaranteed to win (there is always the extremely remote possibility of a third-party or write-in candidate winning), one of them will likely be leaving the board early.
Carson City District Attorney Neil Rombardo said that according to his research, Assembly members assume office immediately after being elected. But neither of these board members' current terms of office are up until the end of the year, and no one is allowed to hold two elected offices at the same time.
Rombardo also said that the board must fill the vacancy within 30 days, so they can't just wait until the new board members take office.
In another quirk of the law, Rombardo said that if the board decided to choose the person elected to fill the open seat in the next term, that those two months would count as a full term against their term limit.
So, let's suppose that Williamson wins, and the board picks the winner of the race between Karen Abowd and Rob Joiner to fill the last two months of Williamson's unfinished term. That means that person will only be able to get reelected once, serving a total of eight years and two months, instead of three terms and 12 years.
This probably means that the board will be looking to appoint someone other than a newly elected candidate to fill those final two months, a lame duck replacement supervisor.
The timing of this board vacancy could also impact the decision on the Nugget Project. If the board doesn't act on this before the election (the final plans have already been pushed back two months, and are not scheduled to be presented until the end of September), then it could be a four-person board that votes on it. That means two negative votes could stop the project from proceeding.
Since Williamson is a supporter of this project and Livermore opposed, whoever wins the Assembly race might also hurt his/her side's chances of prevailing. For instance, if Livermore wins the Assembly seat, it could be difficult for opponents to find two votes against the Nugget Project.
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