Nevada lawmakers seek to sever ties with TRPA
By Jeff Delong, Reno Gazette-Journal
Characterizing the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency as a heavy-handed bureaucracy treading on property rights and overly influenced by California, Nevada lawmakers are seeking to pull the state from the organization.
Legislators from Southern Nevada, Washoe County and Douglas County are backing legislation to withdraw Nevada from the Tahoe Regional Planning Compact, ratified by Congress in 1969 as a needed step to protect an endangered Lake Tahoe.
Supporters insist a pullout is needed to allow long-stifled property improvements on Tahoe’s Nevada side. Detractors say the bill stands to endanger a carefully engineered approach to regulating land use while protecting the environment.
SB 271 — the seventh attempt to distance Nevada from TRPA — is needed to rescue Tahoe’s Nevada side from a stifling regulatory environment largely controlled by California interests, said the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. John Lee, D-North Las Vegas.
“The pendulum has swung so far it won’t swing back,” Lee said. “We no longer want to be told by California what we can and cannot do. The thrust of this is Nevada just wants to control Nevada.”
The Legislation would create a new Nevada-based planning body, with members appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor, state forester, administrator of state lands, and Washoe, Douglas and Carson City counties.
Another member would represent the public.
The panel, Lee said, would likely work in coordination with a similar California-appointed commission but would give Nevada greater control over its own land use.
In its current structure, Lee said, TRPA is “stopping growth, stopping business, stopping everything.”
The idea that the TRPA represents little environmentalists who are struggling to overcome wealthy land barons is dishonest and misleading. What we really have is limousine environmentalists blocking families from making basic improvements to their homes or earning a living in construction. The leaders of TRPA are dedicated and charming folks, but their policies have done little to protect the environment and their enforcers are, by many accounts, thugs. If you read the mission of the TRPA, it is evident that they have suffered mission creep and have no legal basis for their enforcement policies. Nevada is to be commended for this move to defang this well intended but now broken organization.
TRPA has forgotten who they serve. It’s not any of those groups mentioned, not environmentalists, or a property owner with exclusion to the environment. It’s us, the voters, constiuents. We might be a property owner or just a resident, a business owner. We all care about the lake, but not more than we care about making a living so we can take care of our families. I hear screaming from someone in Berkeley at the mere thought I might want to make a decent living here at the lake, or maybe improve how my business looks. But if I do those things, some planner at the TRPA will tell me it doesn’t look right, that’s right, LOOK right. Not that more run off is coming off polluting the lake, no, they don’t like the design and that my friends is not the mission of the TRPA.
TRPA should begin to listen to the who they serve. No one is suggesting a bridge over the lake today. The ideas of 40 years ago are long gone.
What we want today is a deck on our property to sit and enjoy the wonder and beauty of Tahoe. We want a new storefront on our business so people visiting might actually get out of their car and come on in, instead of driving right past as they shutter at the thought of bounding up and over the rocky entrance into a gutted old dissolving driveway, tell me, how is that better?
We want to put two stories on our house, but not have to built it only 12 feet wide to account for the coverage issues.
We’d like to be treated like adults with common sense, balacing rational modern environmental protections on our property with the rights to enjoy life the way we want.
Balance,reason, common sense. The few who seek to block every from of improvements, remodeling, building do NOT use science to prove the ideas are harmful, they demand the policy makers depart from their and our common sense and engage in debate for the mere sake of debate to stall, wear down the idea taking away our and everyone’s right to pursue our liberty and right to prosperity.
The TRPA’s mission was to ensure our rights were protected and did not trample on the beauty of the lake. Instead they took our rights and trampled on those in the name of protecting something, but they are not sure what because the science has never been linked to the rules of TRPA even though Rochelle tries her best to do so, it’s only her argumentative nature that shuts everyone down, they get sick of listening to it.
The TRPA planner who says the windows on a project must be moved so they are southern facing, is not protecting the lake. The planner who picks every detail of a design apart, is not protecting the lake, they are protecting their job. How does noise affect lake clarity, please provide me the science. And the color of my house? The number of windows and size? The size of the sign in front of my business does exactly what to the lake? I can not argue, to who? It is the TRPA planner who decides if my project can get in front of the board, the planner who takes my rights, the planner who takes their power beyond what the mission actually is.
Now is the time to take back our rights. Write Nevada, and California, demand our rights be returned. Protect US from environmentalists who think their opinion and ideas are more right than others, demand science lead the way. Let us determine what our community should look like. We are the people who live here. If we have a design we like that fits our community, that improves or eliminates runoff into the street, and lake, then mission accomplished, right?
Now is the time to say, TRPA, mission accomplished, you stopped the bridge back in the day. Now, get out of the way of our right to prosperity, the pursuit of liberty, the pursuit of happiness, peace and tranquility. We only need now, a few simply protections and requirements that are easily accomplished with the technology available today. I don’t want the lake to continue to be known as the most heavily regulated and overly governmental place on earth as it is known today, rather, it should be the most peaceful place to live a quality life in a community balacing their love for the lake with their love for life.
TRPA has kept that from happening. They need to be dissolved and return the lake and community to its people.
Amen Mr.Kubby. Hope that Calif. follows suit.
Nevada!! Please don’t leave CA without taking the TRPA with you! Yo!! You listening!
Maybe TRPA doesn’t feel the need to “serve” because they were “chosen” and not elected? Perhaps this is the root of the problem… Why would we have such a powerful group in charge of so much and the “people” are not in charge?
Makes you wonder…
Nevada appears to be running away from something they helped create… What about trying to be part of the solution…?