Lawmakers work Saturday to move bills before next big legislative deadline

CARSON CITY - Nevada senators held their first Saturday session and Assembly members held their second weekend session of the 1999 Legislature, acting on dozens of bills.

The idea was to get a head start on the coming week - which will end next Friday with a deadline to have action on bills completed. The Legislature adjourns May 31.

One bill approved Saturday by the Assembly lets judges impose county jail time for crimes that normally would result in probation.

SB148 would allow judges to sentence people convicted of category "E" felonies - usually for nonviolent crimes like welfare fraud or drug possession - to up to a year in county jails as a condition of probation.

The bill is intended to correct an inadvertent effect of a 1995 truth-in-sentencing law that forbade jail for such convictions under most circumstances, according to supporters.

The 1995 law allows felons to thumb their noses at the courts because they know they usually won't face any time behind bars, supporters say.

But the bill's critics say that if judges want to get a convicted felon's attention, they should order a prison term at the state's cost and not order probation in a local jail at the county's cost.

The Assembly also passed SB57, a bill expanding intensive drug and alcohol treatment program in Warm Springs prison.

The so-called "therapeutic community" program is an intensive substance abuse and life skills program in which inmate participants live separately from other prisoners and participate in up to 14 hours of classes, counseling and other programs daily.

But the original program sponsored by Sen. Valerie Wiener, D-Las Vegas, was limited to volunteers and first offenders who are within one year of release. Her bill relaxes those requirements.

She said in committee that making the program available to those with more than one felony conviction gets at a population that badly needs substance abuse, anger control and other training to turn their lives around.

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