Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Maria Silva.

And for Amber Renee Dixon, who is on maternity leave.

Thanks so much for joining us.

We'll get to the newest effort to help people with dementia and their families in a moment.

But first, important to bill.

Deadlines have changed in the Nevada legislature.

And joining us now to update us on what's going on up in Carson City is Jacobson, this reporter from the Nevada Independent.

Jacob, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me.

All right.

Let's talk about that deadline.

What happened?

Well, that legislators kicked it by a week.

Essentially, what's supposed to happen is that legislators have a bunch of bill draft requests, and those are supposed to be introduced on the floor of the assembly in the Senate by what was supposed to be last Monday.

That didn't happen.

They moved it a week tentatively.

And we'll see if the rest of the bills are introduced by this next Monday.

And let's talk a little bit about the fact that there are so many bills.

How many have been introduced and how many still need to be introduced?

Well, there's more introduced every day.

I haven't checked the floor sessions today, but we're probably well over 700.

And usually there's about a thousand every every session it's about that much.

So they have their work cut out for them.

And let's talk a little bit about the fact that this is not the first time that this has happened.

It happened that last time it was COVID related.

What was the reasoning behind this postponement?

That's right.

So so like you said, in 2021, there were lots of COVID restrictions.

A lot fewer people could be in the building.

That made drafting bills a lot harder.

And so that's why they moved the deadline then.

This time, it appears to be more of a staffing problem, that there's just as many bills as ever.

But because, you know, vacancy rates in state agencies, that includes the Legislative Council bureau, all of these lawyers who are helping draft all of these sometimes very complicated, sometimes tens, hundreds of pages long bills, all of that is crammed up and in gummed up the works.

All right.

We'll keep an eye on the next deadline, but some bills were introduced, some very important ones, some of them dealing with gun restrictions.

Let's talk about that one.

Yeah, that's right.

So Sandra Howard, a Democrat from Las Vegas, introduced a couple of bills that would actually expand certain gun controls.

One of them, for instance, would make it illegal to possess or sell certain semiotic firearms like shotguns or rifles to people who are under 21.

And that would also sort of clean up some of the state's ghost gun bans, you know, trying to get rid of guns that don't have serial numbers and cleaning up the legal language there.

And let's also I think that, you know, it's it's still an issue.

Okay.

We'll keep an eye on that as well.

Let's talk also about when it comes to tenant rights.

Several advocates were up there in Carson City.

A big thing that happened is also the overhauling summary evictions.

That bill was introduced.

Yeah, that's right.

And I think with housing, you know, that summary eviction process is one that Democrats have really taken an eye on because they want to look to move the onus from the the tenant to the landlord.

Right now, tenants have to file sort of a challenge to an eviction proceeding.

Now, what Democrats want is to make it so that landlords have to file for eviction in the first place in a court and then, you know, a longer shot.

For instance, Democrats, some Democrats are also looking at maybe increasing tenant rights, you know, making it rent control, rather, making it harder to raise rents beyond certain inflationary levels.

That appears to be a more distant goal.

There's been a lot of pushback even from within the Democratic Party.

So it's less clear that that's going to make it through, especially with a Republican governor who does not want rent control.

And let's talk about the governor.

Joe Lombardo, expected to be in Carson City.

What will he be discussing?

That's right.

So he is actually going to come to the legislature, we think, here today, on Thursday, to to testify in front of legislators for his bill on school violence.

Right.

And this is all about restorative justice.

In 2019, legislative Democrats back in sorry, a bipartisan effort, rather, I should say, of legislators backed a bill that would have that did change the discipline systems in schools to put less of an emphasis on so-called progressive discipline and more of an emphasis on restorative justice.

But this, a lot of teachers have said, has created a violence catastrophe, essentially in especially Clark County.

But even in rural and Washoe County districts.

And so now the governor and Democrats have both made a push to totally reform this restorative justice model with the governor in particular, looking to strip it back entirely.

And this is the first time he will be going before lawmakers during this legislative session, correct?

That's right.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's speaking of schools and safety and security.

There was another important hearing that also happened there, that one involving Clark County School District superintendent, Dr. his sister Ira, as well as Police Chief Mike Black.

Tell us about that hearing and what came out of that hearing.

Yeah, that's right.

And this one came out of a particular incident in which, you know, there was videotape of 60 police having a an altercation with a student in Las Vegas that went viral online.

But was what was interesting is even though the sort of the legislative committee played a video, played that video, they weren't allowed to discuss it.

And so when ended up happening was this sort of general discussion about police use of force by school police in Clark County.

And what we heard was, frankly, a lot of the Democrats expressing frustration at the way that force is used.

But we also heard 62 black guy expressed frustration that, you know, it's very easy to criticize school police, but they're under-resourced and understaffed as well.

And it's important to note also that one of the reasons that they weren't able to talk about that is because this is still under investigation, correct?

That's correct.

Yes.

Yeah.

All right.

Before we leave you and you do need to talk about in talks, you were co-hosted by co-host, co-moderator of that event.

Tell us a little bit about what happened that evening.

It was a very lively conversation with some of Nevada's top lawmakers.

Where we need to be.

That's right.

And we got all four top lawmakers in the room.

And, you know, on some stuff, they weren't going to budge.

Frankly, the Democrats are not moving an inch on election reforms.

For instance.

They want to keep the mail in elections as they are.

The Republicans obviously want things like voter ID, stuff like that is a nonstarter for the Democrats.

But certainly on issues like education, we heard both party leaders say that, you know, they want accountability from the school districts, from school superintendents if they're going to give them, say, $2 billion.

Right.

And increase funding, which is what we're expecting this session.

They are asking these superintendents to justify to them, well, how are you going to spend it?

So, you know, there are some areas of compromise.