Our View: Splitting TRPA not worth the trouble

We subscribe to the principle that government that governs least governs best.

Unfortunately, residents at Lake Tahoe find themselves subject to government where the opposite often happens.

We love Lake Tahoe as much as anyone, but there's such a thing as loving something to death, and we believe that the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency on occasion has come very close to doing that.

A bill withdrawing Nevada from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency would create a Nevada Tahoe Regional Planning Agency that would cover the basin in Douglas and Washoe counties and in Carson City.

The new seven-member board would include representatives of the three counties, the governor, the lieutenant governor, the state forester, the division of state lands and a representative of the public at large who would be appointed by the governor, and hopefully a Tahoe resident.

At a hearing held last week, some of the credit for the TRPA's operation went to the folks who try to manage the agency by litigation. We seriously doubt that will change much on the Nevada side.

The threat that Nevada will pull out of the bi-state compact may be sufficient to help bring the agency to heel. We hope so, because our preferred alternative is not to replace it with another version.

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