Because this new county had no population, any federal payments for placing the nuclear waste site there would go directly to the state treasury. Furthermore, property tax rates in the county were set at 5 percent, the highest allowable by the state constitution and higher than the statutory limit of 3.64 percent. This tax burden, possibly up to $25 million a year for the state, was meant to deter the waste site's creation by making it prohibitively expensive to use the land for a radioactive waste dump. However, it also guaranteed that the waste site would at least provide a large amount of money for the state government if it were ever built. The bill was passed at 3:45 am on June 18, 1987—near the end of the year's legislative session—and signed into law by Governor Richard Bryan. The law stipulated that if the repository was not built in the county it would be dissolved and reincorporated into Nye County.