Thursday, March 27, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
AB224 appropriates $3.5 million to match Federal Emergency Management Agency grants. Those grants were primarily used for debris removal and bridge repair.
The Assembly had originally wanted the bill to include a section allowing local governments to borrow money for disaster relief from the state's $123 million "rainy day" fund.
But the Senate deleted that portion, saying that a separate disaster relief fund should be established for local and state government use. Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, is sponsoring a bill to create such a fund with interest from the rainy day fund.
AB224 was then returned to the Assembly, where members rejected the Senate's amendment and asked for the creation of a conference committee to hammer out a compromise.
On Wednesday, conference committee members briefly met to review the bill. The committee included Senators Bill O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas; Jack Regan, D-Las Vegas; and Rawson, and Assembly members Richard Perkins, D-Henderson; Jan Evans, D-Sparks; and Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville.
Perkins said later that the committee decided to accept the bill with the Senate's amendment because the measure was an emergency and local governments weren't likely to borrow money from the rainy day fund anyway.
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