Regarding “A Law Unto Themselves” in the April
issue of Nevada Journal:
It’s a great article and very true.
Jim Koroush
Sacramento
Prop 6 Was Axed
I believe your February issue of Nevada Journal has an
error concerning the old Proposition 6 to limit property tax increases.
The article indicates that the required second vote failed; that
would have been in 1980, I presume. My notes show that the second vote was never allowed;
the legislators wouldn’t allow the second vote and instead applied their own fix which was
by limits in county-wide values or taxes, rather than at the individual property level.
That limit, of course, did not help Incline Village, which was being lumped in with Washoe
County.
Roger C. Steele
Incline Village
To the Mattresses
Rudolph Giuliani, mayor of the city of New York, and I have one
thing in common: Our favorite movie is The Godfather. And we should take a lesson
from Rudy. When he is attacked by another politician or special interest group, he and his
team “go to the mattresses.” They hunker down, refuse to negotiate and begin a
war. The people in the silver State must take this posture with the politicians and
public servants if this state is to survive.
Robert B. Gooden
Elko
Federal Silliness
I am writing about the Bureau of land Management’s proposed
“3809” mining regulation revisions.
I am against these revisions because they are unneeded, and rather than help my mining
friends or me, harm us. The least harmful of the alternatives proposed is the “no
action” alternative.
More than 40 years ago I moved to Ely, Nevada. I worked for a contractor, who worked for
the Consolidated Copper Mines Company, which was latter bought out by Kennecott.
I met my wife’s father and we went into the mining business shipping
gold and silver flux ore to Kennecott. This was pick-and-shovel, hand-tramming work, using
an old 1939 5-ton truck to haul our ore off the hill. I did not even have a thermos
bottle. My wife, Sharon, used to walk the mile up the side of the mountain at noon
in the wintertime to bring us a quart Mason jar full of hot coffee. One time I figured out
that we were making a little over $5 an hour, after paying our expenses.
Those were of course the “good old days”–the days when the American government
believed in private property, instead of so much in federal property. The government’s job
was to protect the land from the people.
The existing federal regulations for rehabilitation of lands used in mining
now require one to spend tens of thousands of dollars per acre rehabilitating land. The
best value to out nation for these lands would be to leave those beautiful veins, dips,
angles, spurs, beddings, rocks and minerals exposed so that present day prospectors can
see, explore, and enjoy them, and future generations can start there when they need more
of the minerals.
What an economically wasteful attitude the federal government has adopted. The regulators
have decided what is the best way for them–not us–to enjoy the federal lands.
Somehow or other the federal government has decided that the only thing that has beauty is
the top of the last sagebrush leaf which has fallen off the bush.
What about the Grand Canyon? It is only a big beautiful hole in the ground. If it were
man-made the federal government would want to cover it up, spending billions on more
non-productive activity that removes capitol from our society–capital that otherwise
would produce factories, jobs, and wealth for our nation.
I was drafted into the army in 1955. I remember sitting on the edge of my cot in Fort Ord
basic training camp sending $25 of the $90 per month I was earning to Jon Collins, my
attorney, trying to fight the Forest Service which was condemning the surface rights to my
mining claims.
Ever since then it has been a fight for survival against the federal government and their
overstaffed and non-productive employees.
This new set of section 3809 regulations are just another twist of the rope around out
throats–meant to harm those of us who make our living through, and who enjoy, the mining
industry.
The rules will extend permitting time and require the BLM to expand its presence by hiring
many new nonproductive people. It will cost a lot of money, for no economic benefit to our
society. The regulations will also cost the state of Nevada good paying jobs and deprive
the state and counties of tax money that they now receive from mines.
