Despite running one business and starting another in the midst of an economic downturn, RG Smith had energy lots of energy left over.
So the Reno entrepreneur is fired up these days about a plan to win
preference in state and local government contracting for veterans who suffered service-related disabilities.
Smith has written a bill that will be introduced by Nevada
Assemblywoman Debbie Smith, a Democrat from Sparks (and no relation to RG Smith), when the Legislature convenes early next year, and he's devoting untold hours to developing support for the measure even before the Legislature is gaveled into session.
Since late September, Smith has called purchasing departments in each of the 50 states.
He's gathered laws from the three states Michigan, Florida and California that give preference to companies owned by disabled
veterans.
He's taken the best from each of those laws and combined them into a proposal for Nevada. ("It may not be the best, but it's the best I can," he says.)
Now Smith is spending his spare time calling an 11-page list of veterans organizations to line up their support. He passed out about 400 postcards at the Reno parade on Veterans Day, asking recipients to send the postcards to their legislators in support of the bill.
All this time comes while Smith is launching Nevada Property Maintenance, a sister company to his real estate and property management firm, New Dimensions Inc.
"Now that I've started, and now that all the veterans are counting on me, I hate to give up the ship," says Smith. "I just don't let go."
Smith, who served aboard the U.S.S. Constellation in the 1980s, got fired up about the question of contracting preferences when he bid for a schools job in Reno this year and was told that state, along with schools and cities in Nevada, doesn't give a break to companies owned by disabled veterans.
The federal government has established a goal of awarding 3 percent of its contracts to companies owned by disabled veterans, and other states are looking at similar programs.
"The trend is going that way," says Smith. "Why shouldn't Nevada take a leadership position?"
His proposed legislation would encourage the state to give preference to small businesses those with fewer than 100 employees and net worth of less than $5 million. The Nevada Commission on Economic Development would administer the program.
"Service-disabled veterans are looking for a hand up and not a hand-out," he says, noting that disabled veterans are far less likely than other veterans to become self-employed.
