Friday, March 7, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- Harry Mortenson is a rocket scientist.
Well, not really.
But he is a nuclear physicist, and he holds an additional graduate degree in mathematics.
Recently, he was putting his analytical skills to use while looking at the $1.7 billion price of a water pipe being built from Lake Mead to Las Vegas. Only one pipe pumps water to the Las Vegas Valley. The second will allow Clark County to grow from 1.2 million to 2 million people.
To Mortenson, a freshman Democratic assemblyman from Las Vegas, something in the water pricing looked fishy.
What bothered him is that Southern Nevadans are probably going to get stuck with a quarter-cent sales tax increase to pay 30 percent of the cost. Legislators will begin contemplating a bill to that effect, perhaps as early as next week. The rest will come from hookup fees and higher water rates.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority, the public body overseeing the project, came up with all those numbers, Mortenson realized. Nobody else in any official capacity really offered a second opinion.
Until now.
"My conclusion was that we didn't need a quarter-cent sales tax," he said.
Mortenson has taken action that could keep taxpayers from getting soaked.
He asked Assembly Speaker Joe Dini, D-Yerington, for permission to hand the numbers to legislative analysts for a thorough going-over.
Dini gave Mortenson the green light, so Mortenson approached the Legislative Counsel Bureau with a straightforward request: Find out if Las Vegas taxpayers are being sold down the river.
The report is due in two weeks.
Water officials note that citizens' advisory boards and local elected officials were involved in pricing decisions at every step.
But that's not good enough for Mortenson. Nor does it sit well other legislators, such as Sen. Ann O'Connell, R-Las Vegas, and Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Las Vegas, who also are beginning to ask questions.
"The nice thing would be if they said, 'No, we don't need the tax,'" Mortenson said. "But that's probably wishful thinking."
Good ol' boys
Cynics would say the Senate side of the legislative building is becoming a boy's club.
First, Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, told Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, that she would have to abandon her first-floor office to make room for Republican Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren and Sen. Lawrence Jacobsen, R-Minden.
Republicans argue that their leaders may be partisan, but they're not sexist.
Now, Assemblywoman Sandi Krenzer, D-Las Vegas, has gotten a boot of a different sort.
She had been using the Senate lounge, at Jacobsen's approval, to rest when she felt ill. (Assembly members have their own lounge.)
The other day, she was leaving the Senate lounge after a meeting when Senate Sergeant At Arms Charles Welsh told her not to come back.
Krenzer supposedly threatened Welsh with his job. She denies that, but she does accuse him of "being rude," which Welsh says is not true.
Krenzer and Raggio met and agreed to call the incident a "misunderstanding."
Meanwhile, Welsh still has his job, and Titus is packing her boxes to move upstairs.
Milk it
Former Las Vegas Assemblyman Roger Bremner is joining forces with his longtime friend, former Assembly Speaker Bob Barengo, a Reno lobbyist. Barengo, as chairman of the state Diary Commission, led a drive to hire Bremner as executive secretary, succeeding Bryn Armstrong, who retired.
Bremner, who served as Assembly Ways and Means chairman, is administrator of the Nevada Job Training Office. This will be his fourth state job in four years. He also worked for the State Industrial Insurance System and the Employment Security Division.
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