Nevada Focus: Marriage licenses fund programs for battered women

LAS VEGAS - Martina Mertens and Jens Brendler hurry into the county courthouse, eager to stand in line to purchase a marriage license. They came from Germany to tie the knot here and have a lot on their minds - the chapel, flowers, future plans.

Across town, Las Vegas resident Maria Gonzalez is trying to get back on her feet after spending eight months in a shelter for battered women.

The lives of the future newlyweds and Gonzalez, a mother of three from Mexico, are worlds away, yet they intersect in an important way.

Fifteen dollars of the $35 it cost Mertens and Brendler for a marriage license will go to help fund domestic violence programs across Nevada.

''It's just become a creative way to utilize fees to address the needs that families and children have in our state,'' said Karen Marconi, executive director for SAFE House in Henderson, just outside of Las Vegas.

Funding domestic violence programs through marriage license fees began in 1981 after former state Sen. Sue Wagner and the late Jan Evans, who volunteered to help Wagner get the bill passed and later became an assemblywoman, presented the Legislature with the idea.

Since then, millions of dollars - all collected from brides and grooms - has gone to shelters and domestic abuse programs in all of Nevada's 17 counties.

''We had so many marriages in Nevada, more than any other state,'' said Wagner, a former lieutenant governor and now a member of the Nevada Gaming Commission. ''Even though we were small in terms of our population, it really was a significant source of funding.''

In 1981, wedding chapels campaigned against the bill and others said charging tourists more money to marry would scare them away from Nevada.

Other states had similar funding for programs, but none depended so much on tourists as Nevada does.

But Wagner and Evans were adamant and eventually persuaded the Legislature to pass the bill. Then, only a few dollars from each license went to the state fund for domestic violence programs. Now $15 of each license is earmarked for the fund.

Even though Las Vegas is the hot spot to marry - more than 114,000 certificates were issued in 1999 - each county can receive funding for its programs.

In 1999, $2.1 million collected from marriage licenses was distributed to 16 different programs, said Chris Graham, who oversees the fund for the state. The programs received about the same money the year before.

The money collected is distributed each year by grant requests and given to any non-profit domestic violence program that meets certain criteria - services have to be provided in Nevada and counties of 100,000 people or more have to provide a shelter and operate a hotline.

The programs are funded in other ways, too, but many say that without the marriage license money, they wouldn't be able to operate.

''We would not even be in existence without it,'' said Joni Kaiser, executive director of the Committee to Aid Abused Women in Reno. ''It tends to pay for our base services.''

The program will receive $368,899 in July - about 30 percent of its annual funding. The money will help pay for a domestic violence hotline and the salaries of the program's workers.

''Rural Nevada wouldn't have staff at all if it weren't for this money,'' Kaiser said.

Marconi of SAFE House in Henderson said the money is essential to the shelter's survival.

The money helps pay for the 54-bed shelter's operating costs, mostly paying salaries of counselors and hotline workers.

''I think it's important that the state has committed those dollars to fund services for domestic violence,'' she said.

Of course, the happy brides and grooms lining up at the Clark County courthouse to get their licenses have no idea where their money is going. There are no signs to tell them and most couples never ask.

''It's a great idea,'' Brendler, the groom from Germany, said, waiting with his bride to get their license.

But to people like Gonzalez, whose life turned out to be anything but happily ever after, the money has made all the difference.

''They (shelter workers) showed me how to live different,'' said Gonzalez, who came to Safe Nest in Las Vegas after she says her husband tried to strangle her.

After eight months at the shelter, Gonzalez moved out, got a housekeeping job at a casino and is starting a new life with her three children.

''I can do it,'' she said. ''It's hard, but OK. I can do it.''

To Wagner, who has seen the funding endure for 19 years, knowing that it helped just one person is enough.

''You feel you've made a contribution,'' she said. ''That's what I went there to do - a lot of things for women who don't have a chance.''