Silver Dollars & Wooden Nickels: BLM did at least one thing right

The Nevada Appeal’s Silver Dollars & Wooden Nickels feature recognizes achievements from the capital region and, then warranted, points out other acts that missed the mark.

SILVER DOLLAR: Sherry Rupert, who grew up in Carson City, is representing our region well in national circles. Rupert, the executive director of the Nevada Indian Commission, was sworn in this week as a member of the Travel and Tourism Advisory Board by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. Rupert certainly keeps busy; she’s also the president of the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association.

SILVER DOLLAR: The state Supreme Court made the right call, upholding the district court decision to remove John Michael Schaefer’s name from our state’s primary election ballot. Schaefer, who was running for state controller, ran for the Los Angeles City Council last year and declared himself a California resident then, making him ineligible to run for office here because he hasn’t lived here for two years. Schaefer argued that he’d kept a Las Vegas address while in California, but that argument holds no water.

SILVER DOLLAR: If a poll were taken, the Bureau of Land Management’s approval rating in Nevada would be in the single digits — at roughly 0 percent. And many Nevadans agree the BLM had no business being anywhere near the Bundy ranch, where a ranching family acknowledges it has racked up fees but says it’s not under the federal government’s jurisdiction. But the BLM at least made the right call in ending the standoff. It recognized it was facing a powder-keg situation in which demonstrators already angry at the federal government were gathering, many of them armed. The tense situation was reminiscent of the government’s standoff with the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. That ended in flames and more than 80 deaths. We’re relieved no one was hurt at the Bundy ranch.