Legislature vacant in wake of sine die

Halls that Monday were full with lobbyists, legislators, reporters and staff echoed beneath the footsteps of a lone committee secretary Tuesday.

Those who weren't already on their way back to their "other" lives were probably still asleep in the wake of the wee-hours adjournment of the 2011 Legislature.

The Assembly adjourned on a fatigued, but loud voice vote at 12:59 a.m. Tuesday - one minute before the Nevada Constitution would have made that decision for them.

The Senate was out of business a minute later but continued for another 23 minutes with speeches, apologies and praise for each other.

By mid-morning Tuesday, the halls were primarily populated by janitorial staff picking up miscellaneous scraps of paper, discarded bills and amendments. There were a few lawmakers in the building preparing go home. Sen. David Parks sat mostly surrounded by paperwork from the session, examining it and moving most of it to a garbage box at his feet. He said he planned to leave for home in Las Vegas today.

Sen. Ben Kieckhefer's wife and assistant through the session, April, was doing the same, filling up a huge blue garbage can on wheels with now unneeded amendments and other paperwork. The "confidential" budget highlight sheets, she said, were headed for the shredder.

Down the hall, Sen. Joe Hardy of Boulder City and his wife Jill also were getting ready to leave.

Bonnie Borda, Sen. Sheila Leslie's top assistant, was doing the same, cleaning up and filing the paperwork still needed and disposing of the rest.

One staffer joked that you could use the main hallway as a shooting range without endangering a soul Tuesday morning.

In the end, lawmakers approved a $17.9 billion budget that is more than $500 million less overall than the current budget. Of that, $6.2 billion is General Fund and another $940 million is Highway Fund money.

The vast majority of the remainder is in the Authorizations Act which contains federal funds, fees and self-supporting budgets and totals $11.7 billion in all.

Lawmakers who are members of the money committees or the Legislative Commission, however, will return probably sooner than they would like. The Interim Finance Committee will meet June 30 to adopt some of the work programs implementing the budget they approved this past weekend. The commission also will meet to assign lawmakers to different interim studies. That meeting date has not yet been set.