State Agencies And Their Planning For The Future

By Doug Busselman | NFB Executive Vice President

Recently two state agencies launched their public engagement process for planning actions that they are working to carry out over the next year or so. Another major state agency has recently wrapped up their nearly 18-month planning process, finalizing the recommendations which came from a working group of stakeholders who developed their report to go to the 2023 Nevada Legislature.

Two of the agencies, the Nevada Department of Transportation and the Nevada Division of Water Resources’ Water Planning Section took a more formal planning approach with identified stakeholders being named to advisory groups to work through their planning process. The Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) has approached the development of their Sagebrush Habitat Plan with a series of public meetings, held across the state, seeking public input identifying the types of ideas which could be included in the plan that they might do.

The update for the Nevada State Water Plan involves a 20-person State Water Plan Stakeholder Advisory Group and follows the state’s Administrative Procedures process with published agendas and public comment periods at the beginning and end of the meeting. This same formal process was followed in developing the Sustainable Transportation Funding Study.

For their part NDOW seems to be taking a route very similar to federal land managers. The recent public meetings scheduled for sites around the state took on the nature of being scoping meetings with opportunities to offer thoughts on what should be included in the plan that NDOW will probably draft and then send out for public responses. The working model might not be exactly the end process, but based on the take away impression from the first meeting held in Winnemucca on January 17th it seemed to be a rough outline of the concepts they are working from.

For most Nevada citizens the opportunity to be involved in the details of creating state agency plans is not a cherished occasion to be marked on a calendar or even deserving a refrigerator magnet to be posted prominently so you don’t forget. Those who make the time to be “stakeholders” mostly are people who have a job that involves going to meetings to participate by representing others.

The NDOW Winnemucca meeting had one person in attendance who wasn’t there drawing a paycheck as part of their responsibilities for going to meetings like this. Reports from the additional meetings held in rural Nevada indicate that there were very few non-government persons who attended the meeting. Those reports also shared that there were comments made at all of the meetings on how little of notice was provided to make anyone aware that the meetings were being held. (We learned of the meeting schedule, from a third party on the Friday afternoon before the meeting swing began.)

Somehow public input processes need to operate with involvement that isn’t exclusively dominated by federal or state agencies being the participants. On the other hand, too many instances of public input not being listened to or having the agencies already decided in the end product have soured the desires to even pay attention.

The intentions for the Nevada Department of Transportation Sustainable Transportation Funding Study was to identify the mechanisms for tax increases and extra fees to cover the shortfall that the Department believes are needed. After the 18-month process the recommendations that came from the deliberations were to increase taxes, establish some new ones and have additional fees to gain more dollars. Those proposals will likely be part of legislative bills that legislators will be weighing in the 2023 Legislative Session.

The NDOW Sagebrush Habitat Plan indicates that the purpose will be to develop a Nevada centric map and or mapping toolset based on values and threats to help prioritize conservation actions across the various land management/ownership. While it is understandable that NDOW would have their reasons for building maps that deal with their “values” and might work to address the “threats” that they are concerned with…it is a little hard to understand why others might want to automatically fall in line with thinking that is a worthwhile purpose.

Things identified on maps, regardless of how they are represented (blue, green or red colors), especially when those representations are remotely sensed to be either very important or in bad shape has not worked out well for those who rely on being able to use the land which are highlighted on the maps that have been created.

This planning process, created by an Executive Order that a past Governor decreed, states that it will be “developed collaboratively with counties, federal land management and state agencies and other stakeholders.” Yet the swing of public meetings held around the state in January had little to no notification being provided to some key stakeholders. It seemed that federal land management and other federal agencies knew about the meetings, along with other state agencies, but if you weren’t a stakeholder who wasn’t working for one of these agencies, you might not have heard that the meetings were being held.

The update process for the State Water Plan, last published in 1999, also came about through a legislative effort to restaff the water planning function in the Division of Water Resources. This was accomplished in the 2019 Nevada Legislature. The 20-person advisory group of stakeholders were identified based on having a distribution and diversity from across the state as well as representatives of stakeholder groups with direct connections to water resources.

To their credit, the team involved in working with the water planning process have identified what the State Water Plan is supposed to be and also what the State Water Plan is not. Providing this type of parameters and boundaries should help keep the endresult from going off the rails on its way to completion.

As someone who was involved in very intense lobbying to keep the 1999 State Water Plan from becoming a disaster which at times appeared to be an all out effort to redesign Nevada Water Law and reshuffle the foundations – having the current limitations and direction spelled out is less of a reason to start out with confrontation. It is good to read that the State Water Plan is not a plan to change water laws nor reallocate water among users. It is good to read that the State Water Plan is not a plan for new regulations. It is not a plan to be used as an advocacy document.

Regardless of whatever agency is working on their next plan to do whatever they have intentions to try to accomplish, it’s important for Nevada citizens to be kept in the loop of what is taking shape. They may not wish to sit through the endless meetings and discussions over specifics, but they still need to have a say, at some point, in whether they believe the plan fits with their interest and the interests of others who are directly affected.

Being active in organizations who represent your interest and staying informed is a sound strategy to follow and work with those who are involved in the planning process to have your voices heard by the agencies developing their plans.