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Lesperance heads ag dept.

Monday, March 3, 2008 5:29 PM PST

Tony Lesperance

CARSON CITY (AP) - Tony Lesperance, a rancher who had a key role in an anti-federal government crusade in Elko County a decade ago, took over Monday as head of the state Agriculture Department.

Lesperance said he will work with federal agencies but remains committed to representing “the state's interests to the best of my abilities. I don't take a lot of excitement with the federal government running over me. ... I will stand up.”

“Yes, I can work with federal agencies, and obviously with the federal government owning nearly 90 percent of the state of Nevada I don't have any choice but to work with them,” the Paradise Valley rancher and former Elko County commissioner said.

Lesperance takes over the state post, paying just over $101,000 a year, from Donna Rise, who resigned last month after only nine months on the job. She returned to Montana to resume a job as a bureau chief for that state's agriculture agency.

Gov. Jim Gibbons urged Lesperance to take the state post. He had encouraged him to apply for it before naming Rise last year, but Lesperance said he turned down the earlier offer.

Lesperance, 72, said this time he agreed to take the job for up to 18 months, to see the agriculture agency through the state's current budget crisis and through the 2009 legislative session.

“From Day One, we're going through the budget. It's going to be 'budget' for quite a little while,” he added.

Lesperance also said he will work to resolve differences among ranching interests in Nevada and “bring respect back to the Department of Agriculture.”

A recent legislative audit cited problems including a failure by the department to collect more than $200,000 in fiscal 2004 because of “billing and collection weaknesses.” Also cited was a lack of controls to safeguard funds and equipment, and inadequate information to ensure fees are set appropriately.

The agency also has been criticized by the Nevada Live Stock Association, a private property rights' advocacy group long at odds with the agency over its enforcement of grazing rules on federal land in Nevada.

Launce Rake of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada said he's concerned about the appointment of Lesperance because his views appear “alarmist and extreme.” Rake added that the appointment indicates Gibbons is endorsing “an extreme, anti-government position.”

In the mid-1990s, Lesperance was an outspoken critic of what he termed arbitrary land management decisions by federal agencies. He labeled them a conspiracy between environmental groups and the federal agencies to rid public lands of livestock.

When a fight developed over a washed-out road that Elko County wanted to rebuild on federal land despite Forest Service opposition based on environmental concerns, Lesperance, as chairman of the Elko County Commission in 1999, vowed to rebuild the road “come hell or high water.”

“In that particular instance, the Forest Service was wrong,” Lesperance said Monday. “We proved it, and the road got fixed.”

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