Power to pols

Friday, April 24, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Well-run businesses frequently engage in self-examination to cure structural deficiencies that can prevent companies from succeeding. Not many entrepreneurs can rely on the same business models that worked five years ago.

Yet state government in Nevada has never undergone major restructuring since gaining statehood in 1864.

UNLV law professor Tuan Samahon said he thinks the time has come for that to change. As reported last week by J. Patrick Coolican in the Las Vegas Sun, a sister publication of In Business Las Vegas, Samahon has proposed that the state convene a constitutional convention that he said could help correct imbalances of power within state government.

Although a constitutional convention is a radical idea, and we’re not yet sold on this approach, there is merit to having a serious dialogue on the relative weakness of the Nevada Legislature when stacked up against the powerful executive branch.

A good place to start is to support a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the Legislature to meet annually instead of once every two years, which has become an outmoded way of conducting the people’s business. Assembly Joint Resolution 6, which passed the Assembly and was forwarded to the Senate, paves the way for annual sessions and represents a major repair of a legislative system that is clearly broken. It would have to be approved by the Legislature this year and in 2011 and by voters in 2012 to take effect.

Good people are essential to make state government run well, but they need to have a framework that makes sense for the 21st century. A weak legislative branch is standing in the way of making that happen.