Category Archives: Nevada

Supreme Court refuses to hear Hage ‘takings’ case

The Supreme Court this week denied certiorari in the case of Estate of Hage v. U.S.

The Hage family, which owns the Pine Creek Ranch near Tonopah, has been waging a court battle with the federal agencies for 22 years.

Wayne Hage, left, his son Wayne N. Hage, and young Hage niece, Kristin, in 1999 during branding at Pine Creek Ranch near Tonopah, Nev. (Photo by Ramona Hage)

At one point in the many iterations of the Hage litigation a federal court awarded the Hages $2.9 million for the taking of their water rights under the Fifth Amendment and $1.4 million in statutory compensation for improvements made in connection with the revoked grazing permit. With interest the total award amounted to $14.2 million. And that was four years ago.

An appellate court vacated the award, saying the case was not yet “ripe” because the Hages had failed to continue filing for grazing permits, even though it would have been a futile gesture.

This past month a Nevada federal judge ordered Hage to apply for a permit and for the federal agencies to grant it. He also enjoined the government from issuing trespass or impound notices to Hage.

What that does to the ripeness of the takings case is unclear to me., but the Liberty and Property Rights Coalition quoted Wayne N. Hage, the heir of E. Wayne and Jean Hage, as saying:

“We of course are disappointed the Court failed to settle a dispute so central to the road and water way infrastructure of the West.  However, the question before the Supreme Court involved only a very small part of the eight published decisions issued by Judge Loren Smith and its impact on our ranching operation is minimal. …

 ”All of Judge Smith’s property findings and most of the original $4.2 million judgment remain intact with 8 percent interest accruing.  Also important to ranchers is that the Federal Circuit found that we must be guaranteed access to our vested stock water rights.”

No sale: Why Chinese solar power company couldn’t find a buyer

Before last year’s National Clean Energy Summit 5.0 at the Bellagio, Harry Reid promoted the confab in a live-streaming Facebook public appearance with questions via Twitter. During the session he was asked about the status of the ENN Solar project near Laughlin. He immediately dumped on the state’s publicly regulated power company.

“That would start tomorrow if NV Energy would purchase the power. …” he said. “NV Energy could do that. It would be so good for Nevada. … But NV Energy is more interested in other types of power and they don’t control the facility. So we’re working hard. I would hope NV Energy would be willing to do this. They haven’t been willing to work on this and that’s such a shame.”

Though he was mumbling a bit by this point, he seemed to imply that the Public Utility Commission was reluctant to move on the project either.

He later flatly stated, “The biggest obstacle we have to renewable energy is NV Energy.” His moderator chuckled and moved on to the next question.

Asked for a response, NV Energy replied that it already exceeded its legislatively mandated renewable energy purchases by 10 percent and had no plans to seek further renewable power supplies until 2014.

Actually, the company really doesn’t need more power, “green” or otherwise. NV Energy projects it will sell 2.1 percent less electricity this year than last, and its projections are for power sales to increase about 1 percent a year or less.

So, it was hardly surprising this week that ENN Energy was canceling its deal to buy 9,000 acres of county land because it could not find a buyer for the solar power it planned to generate there. (Reid was in the backroom when that deal was cut.) Harry’s son Rory has already been paid for his services to ENN, I’m sure.

The county press release said:

“ENN Mojave Energy representatives informed the County today that they could not obtain ‘power purchase agreements’ (PPAs) with utility companies within necessary contract deadlines, thus triggering an automatic termination of an agreement to create a solar power generation, manufacturing and research facility on 9,000 acres in southern Clark County.”

If it weren’t for Senate Bill 123, which prematurely shuts down adequately clean coal plants to build natural gas-fired and “green” generators that will add to the company’s equity and increase it’s 10.5 percent return on equity, NV Energy might not need to add any more capacity for a couple of years.

Guess who will get to pay for it. Hint: Look in the mirror.

 

Newspaper column: Federal judge slaps down federal land agents

Wayne Hage, left, his son Wayne N. Hage, and young Hage niece, Kristin, in 1999 during branding at Pine Creek Ranch near Tonopah, Nev. (Photo by Ramona Hage)

During the course of the trial, according to Jones, the government invited others to apply for grazing permits on allotments held by the Hages, applied with the Nevada State Engineer for its own watering rights in an effort to interfere with the Hages’ rights, and issued trespass notices and demands for payment to witnesses soon after they testified in this case.

The judge ordered Hage to apply for a permit and for the federal agencies to grant it. He also enjoined the government from issuing trespass or impound notices to Hage.

In 1986, Hage stopped applying for special use permits to maintain his water sources and ditches on federal land, arguing he had an “absolute right” under Nevada water law to maintain them.

In 1991, the Forest Service twice impounded Hage’s cattle. When he could not get them back by paying the cost of impoundment, the government auctioned the cattle for $39,000 and kept the proceeds — a bit more than $165.88.

That year, Hage filed suit claiming a “taking” of his property rights under the Fifth Amendment.

At one point in the many iterations of the Hage litigation a federal court awarded the Hages $2.9 million for the taking of their water rights under the Fifth Amendment and $1.4 million in statutory compensation for improvements made in connection with the revoked grazing permit. With interest the total award amounted to $14.2 million. And that was four years ago.

An appellate court vacated the award, saying the case was not yet “ripe” because the Hages had failed to continue filing for grazing permits, even though it would have been a futile gesture.

The Fifth Amendment “takings” case has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is scheduled to decide this month whether to hear it.

Considerably more than $165.88 is at stake.

Read the entire column at the Ely or Elko websites.

 

Merkel reins back while Sandoval kicks it up — power bills that is

It’s really not math. It’s just arithmetic. It’s very simple arithmetic. It’s not as complicated as math.

Germans do it, but Nevadans don’t.

Merkel does the math

This week German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the spiraling cost of renewable energy is damaging to the nation’s economic competitiveness and must be reined in.

Sandoval flunks math

Meanwhile, in Carson City, Gov. Brian Sandoval signed into law a bill that will stick it to the customers of NV Energy. Senate Bill 123 dictates that NV Energy close its coal-fired power plants early and charge its customers every dime of the costs, including the cost terminating contracts and down to any coal left lying around. It also mandates, without regard to cost, the building of natural gas-fired power plants along with more “green” energy sources, even though “green” costs quadruple that of coal.

Nevada already has the second highest residential power bills in the West, imagine what they will be after we start paying for all those new power plants and more expensive generation costs.

Newspaper column: Your property rights taken by a federal agency? It could happen to you

In 1957, Frank Sinatra warned in song, “Keep an eye on spring/ Run when church bells ring/ It could happen to you.”

Since one federal agency or another controls at least 85 percent of Nevada, one day it could happen to you. You find yourself downstream — literally or figuratively — of one of those agencies, with your property and livelihood in jeopardy, only to discover your property and livelihood are less important than some minnow, bug or weed.

It happened to Victor Fuentes, as reported in this week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times and Elko Daily Free Press.

In December 2010 Fuentes’ land, 40 acres in the middle of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, was heavily damaged by flooding. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had rerouted a stream but it overflowed its banks during heavy rain.

Annette and Victor Fuentes pose next to a channel running through their church camp in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in 2009. (Pahrump Valley Times photo)

The property is a retreat for the Ministero Roco Solida Church (Solid Rock) and the stream had been one of the major attractions for visitors to what they called Patch of Heaven. Fuentes is the pastor of the church and operator of the camp.

A year later the Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation (CJCL) — a division of the Nevada Policy Research Institute — filed a claim with USF&W for actual damages in the amount of $86,000, claiming “negligent and lawless actions” by the agency caused the flooding.

The agency never even acknowledged receipt of the damages claim. CJCL has since filed lawsuits in two federal courts.

In January, USF&W published an environmental assessment that proposes restoring natural and historic hydrology to the area by removing a dam.

Fuentes replied to the assessment that this “would inevitably result in a permanent or regular flooding of our private property resulting in a permanent ‘taking.’” The Fifth Amendment prohibits taking private property without just compensation. (Fuente’s reply to environmental assessment: Fuentes comments)

Though the USF&W claims it wishes to return the water flow to its “original” stream beds, Fuentes notes it is using 1948 data to determine “original,” when maps dating back to 1881 and an 1891 biological inventory show settlers in the area using the water to grow crops on private land granted at the time of statehood in 1864.

It could happen to you.

(Read the entire column at the Ely or Elko websites. For more accounts of government waste, fraud and abuse in Nevada go to Watchdog Wire-Nevada.)

Harry can’t utter two sentences without lashing out at Republicans, and he wants bipartisanship?

While taking some softball questions following a conference call this morning announcing his 6th annual National Clean Energy Summit in August, Nevada’s senior senator took the opportunity to once again make venomous remarks about Republicans in general and tea partiers in particular.

Asked when a particular energy bill might come up for a vote on the floor of the Senate, where he largely controls the agenda, Harry Reid replied, “Why I of course have tried to get it on the floor, tried to do it, we’ve got immigration, but everything we do around here because of the tea party-driven House and, frankly, Senate makes it very difficult.”

Asked by a Las Vegas Sun reporter about potential federal legislation pushing more renewable energy projects, “Right now as you know very well it’s extremely difficult to get Republicans to focus on major issues. They spend all their time on issues that are so hard to comprehend. Today, for example, having went to all the trouble to make hundreds of thousands of people happy in this country, to allow people who are here with bad papers to make themselves right with the law, the House voted to defund that. It’s just hard to comprehend that they are serious about anything other than just being anarchists, and that’s what they are.”

When newspapers compete, someone can get ‘cockroached’

R-J front page photo today.

We used to call it cockroaching.

When you got wind that a news media competitor was working on a juicy story, you’d jump in with whatever scrap of information, rumor or speculation you could muster to keep that competitor from the satisfaction of a scoop. It was called cockroaching because, whatever a cockroach doesn’t eat, it crawls around in and messes it up for everyone else.

Is that what happened today?

Sun photo from website.

On the front page of the Las Vegas Review-Journal is a photograph of an Air Force captain being reunited with his two daughters on the Strip in front of the TI after a year’s tour of duty in Afghanistan. Cute photo with only a brief caption. Did not tell me where the family lives or any explanation as to why the reunion was on the Strip. Though the photo was on the front page of the R-J on Thursday, the photo was taken Tuesday. Not very timely. Not very informative.

Then, I noticed atop that page the skybox refer, as it is called, under the Las Vegas Sun logo that reads: “TI pirate loot includes a surprise for Nevada family.”sunreferjpg

No one on the R-J newsdesk is supposed to see that refer, which is handled in the production department. The refer is to the cover of the Sun section where one finds a large photo and feature story about the reunion of the captain and his family, which was posted online Tuesday evening. The story never says where the family has been living, only that the captain will be stationed at Nellis Air Force Base.

From photos posted online, it appears the photogs for each paper were standing practically side by side.

The Sun posted the story first. Is that why the R-J carries only a photo and no story? But the R-J had the photo out on the front page, before one gets to the Sun section.

I know this is terribly insiderish and an entirely trivial pursuit, but: Who was cockroaching whom?

How to irritate a rich, liberal television station owner without hardly trying

I met Tina Trenner at a luncheon meeting the other day. She was working the room, handing out fliers urging people to file complaints with the FCC about their local NBC affiliates for not operating in the “public interest.”

Tina Trenner

Now, my principled position on such matters is generally to oppose efforts to gag opposing viewpoints but rather engage them with more free speech and dialogue to reach a Miltonian outcome in which truth prevails. But I might have to make an exception in this case, since the endeavor is a surely a futile gesture, and because it appeals to a certain pleasure obtained by being nettlesome to the overly comfortable and self-assured.

The local NBC affiliate — KSNV-TV, Channel 3 — is Jim Rogers, a wealthy liberal who personally takes to the airwaves to editorialize when it suits his politics and pocketbook. He once did a 10-part editorial series on a news story the Review-Journal was covering though his station never did any news coverage. He also blasted newspapers for not paying sales taxes on ink and paper — the standard manufacturing exemption of materials that produce a final product — even though his family had lobbied for a tax exemption for television commercials.

Trenner argued that much of the news media today is little more than a propaganda arm of liberal politics. Her Battle Born PAC  hopes to at least get the attention of NBC affiliate owners like Rogers who must jump through hoops with the FCC when enough complaints are filed. Why, carrying Jon Ralston’s program alone amounts to an affront to common decency and fairness.

In arguing that NBC affiliates are not broadcasting in the “public interest,” Battle Born PAC states, “We here at Battle Born PAC do not believe NBC feeds its affiliate’s honest or accurate news every night on NBC’s Nightly News. Thereby NBC is causing each affiliate to circumvent the laws of broadcasting and to deliver erroneous, misleading and outright dishonest reports.  It is then impossible for each affiliate to live up to the mandate set forth by Congress. This cannot be in the public interest … to the contrary it is the exact opposite.”

On the website, the PAC points out that each of the approximately 200 NBC affiliates has to renew its license every five years. If they to operate in the “public interest, convenience and necessity,” as the law dictates, that license can be revoked. All complaints go into public files, which must be available for inspection.

The website has instructions for filing such a complaint.

So, if you are feeling nettlesome, procede.

Las Vegas newspaper has tossed out all pretenses of objectivity

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I cannot recall ever seeing a newspaper headline — and I’ve read a half dozen newspapers a day for more 40 years as a newspaper editor — so egregiously editorializing as today’s banner in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The kicker shows the report is about a bill signed three days ago by Gov. Brian Sandoval that creates driver’s authorization cards for those who are in the country illegally, but then the hed reads: “Law fosters freedom, safety,” and the subhed reads: “People living here illegally, state benefit.”

That is hardly an objective presentation of the facts. It is an interpretation with which many can heartily and justifiably disagree. Freedom for whom? Safety for whom? Illegals may benefit, but how will the “state”?

On top of that, the story quotes not a single person offering a contrary opinion as to whether this is a good idea. It is one long, misplaced editorial praising the progressive wisdom of those who came up with this plan.

The story, like just about every other one on this topic, mentions insurance well down in the story and the word appears only twice. As I reported yesterday, requiring illegals to purchase liability insurance as a condition for being allowed to drive in this state might help lower car insurance rates and actually be a benefit to everyone else. But this is never brought up.

It’s all about and only about the wonderful benefits for illegals, even bringing up out of the blue the question of whether those screening for ObamaCare will “be allowed to ask for proof of citizenship, which could be labeled racial profiling by critics?”

The story contains remarkably stilted and partisan language:

“The new law, which Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval signed last week, puts Nevada on that progressive, pro-immigrant map …”

“In what was hailed as a historic day, the state’s first Hispanic governor, with a bipartisan brood gathered around him during Friday’s signing, rejected the notion that state Senate Bill 303, which takes effect on Jan. 1, was somehow politically motivated — a mere strategy by Republicans to curry favor among a disheartened Latino electorate.”

“But this much is certain: Nevada is the latest in a growing chorus of states to take matters into its own hands in the absence of immigration reform by the federal government.”

Objectivity is difficult to achieve, but this story and its headline reveal no one at this newspaper is even trying any more. How absolutely pathetic. Hang your heads in collective shame.

Letting illegals drive legally is not a benefit, but an obligation to buy liability insurance

I cringe every time I read that our immigration laws are broken and need to be fixed. No, our immigration law enforcement is broken and no one, but no one, is willing to lift so much as a finger to do anything about it. The law is just fine.

But when it comes to Senate Bill 303, recently signed by Gov. Brian Sandoval, I don’t look at it as a benefit that allows illegal immigrants to drive, but as an obligation for those who are already driving illegally anyway to buy liability insurance, which protects the rest of us. I must know a half dozen people who have been involved in car wrecks involving drivers who were in the country illegally, had no driver’s license and no insurance whatsoever. Every one of those accidents constitutes a hidden tax that drives up the cost of car insurance for us all. (And I’ve never heard of a single one of those people who were in the country illegally, driving illegally and illegally failing to purchase car insurance being deported.)

Gov. Sandoval signs SB303. (R-J photo)

You can’t get insurance if you can’t legally drive, and you can’t legally drive if you don’t have insurance.

Every news story, in my opinion, buried the lede. They said in order to get a “driver authorization card” an “immigrant” would have to take a driving test — the written part of which may be given in Spanish, by the way — pay a fee and, oh yeah, purchase insurance — an after thought.

How many illegal immigrants ever bother to do so is the big question. While I had my doubts any reporter with any news organization would follow up in the months after the bill becomes law on Jan. 1 and ask this question, I read section 1, paragraph 10 of the law and figured it could be used to cloak the whole thing in secrecy anyway. Why should we and our insurance companies be able to learn whether this is a workable answer or a futile gesture?

That section reads:

“The Director shall not release any information relating to legal presence or any other information relating to or describing immigration status, nationality or citizenship from a file or record relating to a request for or the issuance of a license, identification card or title or registration of a vehicle to any person or to any federal, state or local governmental entity for any purpose relating to the enforcement of immigration laws.”

Not only does that squander the chance to create a good database of immigration law scofflaws should anyone ever get the notion to enforce existing laws, it probably could be an excuse to not reveal to the taxpayers just how many are signing up and becoming insured, even though defining purpose is “relating to the enforcement of immigration laws.” Wouldn’t want to scare anyone away by actually enforcing immigration laws for a change.