Numerous bills fall victim to the Governor's veto.

That's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

More than a week has passed since Nevada's legislative session came to a chaotic close.

Since then, Republican Governor Joe Lombardo has vetoed dozens of bills, even some that had bipartisan support.

Joining us again with their insights into this session are Tabitha Mueller, Capital Bureau Chief of The Nevada Independent; April Corbin Girnus, Deputy Editor of Nevada Current; and Paul Boger, Reporter and Producer for Nevada Public Radio.

Thank you all for joining us again.

This question is for each of you, but, Tabitha, I'll start with you.

Last session, Governor Lombardo set a single-session record for the number of vetoes at 75.

Of the numerous bills that he's vetoed so far this session, what's been most controversial?

(Tabitha Mueller) So we've seen about 56 vetoes so far, and there's probably more that are coming through Friday.

I think the ones that really drew my attention were bills that have gotten bipartisan support, right?

And so we're thinking there's a homeowners association, one that would have explicitly required homeowners associations to allow for childcare facilities.

There's also some housing ones that I think are going to come up in the next election.

We saw efforts to cap rent for seniors, which was a controversial proposal, but one that, you know, said, look, let's do a pilot program and we'll go from there.

Another one that kind of comes immediately to mind is a couple of gun control measures that he also vetoed in 2023 as well.

-All right, Paul, what about you?

(Paul Boger) The HOA measures definitely caught my attention first and foremost.

But of course, there's some things that dealt with education as well.

AB 155 dealt with student-teacher ratios, allowing those to be collectively bargained for to make sure that teachers aren't having to walk into these really large classrooms.

Governor vetoed that.

That's a surprising one.

He said he doesn't want to see those in collective bargaining agreements, because you really can't hold districts to those sort of levels at this point.

So that was one that caught my eye.

Of course, one that would have allowed greater eviction sealing.

Essentially, if you were evicted, you could appeal to have your case sealed after a year.

He said, you know, this would be bad for landlords, that they have a right to know who they are renting a home to.

Essentially, that was the main reason.

And of course, you know a lot of these things when he did-- these housing bills that he, he did veto, a lot of them-- a lot of his concerns were linked to the affordability issue.

He saw these as creating more of an issue with affordability, rather than solving them.

-The pro-business aspect, April, that he has taken this session, do you think that applied to the HOA, what we saw there with allowing daycares at homes that are under HOA supervision?

(April Corbin Girnus) Yeah, that's an interesting bill, because there's this conflict between-- you know, when he vetoed the daycare in home, the in-home daycare provider bill, he said that he acknowledged that childcare is an issue in the state that needs to be addressed, but sort of said that the bigger issue here is that HOAs have authority and should have autonomy.

So he's viewed it as an HOA governance issue and putting regulations on HOAs.

And I think that in contrast to sort of a pro-business sense, where, you know, if you're thinking about supporting small businesses, there's probably no business smaller than an in-home daycare provider.

It's typically a woman who is, you know, has a kid or two of her own and also has decided to watch three or four other kids.

It's a very small business and something that they're providing out of their home, I think to minimal, you know, that they made the argument that it's to minimal disturbance to the rest of the neighborhood.

But unfortunately, that's a-- even though that's technically a business, it's a very small business lobby.

And so the HOAs won out, and they were much harder and much stronger in sort of their opposition to that.

-Yeah.

We live in a daycare desert, so that was needed.

But his argument also was, Hey, we make a choice to live in an HOA.

I think some might counter that, Hey, there's not a lot of housing available.

You don't really have a choice.

You go wherever you can afford.

Tabitha, back to you.

And there was a particular bill with price fixing.

That was the Attorney General's bill.

The Governor vetoed that, and then the Attorney General held a press conference to talk about that.

How common is that, what's behind that do you think?

-I think we always see a little bit of pushback against the vetoes from organizations that wanted a bill.

I think it's sort of unique to see the Attorney General's Office stand up and say, Here he vetoed this important piece of legislation.

And I've got to say, we're looking ahead to the election already, right?

Attorney General Aaron Ford has said that he's going to run for governor.

I think this is what we're going to hear during the campaign is a lot of, This is what he didn't do, or this is what he did, right, from both sides of the aisle, Lombardo and Ford.

And so I think that it's a sign of what's to come.

And it is very-- I think it is very abnormal.

But when you look at the broader picture of the campaign cycle, it makes a lot of sense.

-That's not the only bill that the Governor vetoed that was, that would affect the AG's office.

He also vetoed a bill that would have created an office to prevent gun violence within that-- within the AG's office.

So very much, you know, they are at odds already in this election cycle, and it is already just beginning.

-What was interesting, too, about that veto of the Office of Gun Prevention is that Lombardo said he was vetoing it because he didn't want to politicize it, right?

So he sort of took this stance of, I'm taking an antipolitical stance.

This office should be on its own, outside of the purview of maybe one official.

And what's interesting, too, is that that bill wasn't even sponsored by the Attorney General's Office.

It was sponsored by Senator Edgar Flores.

And so you're just seeing these minute pollings.

And even some of the housing legislation that I'm sure we'll get into, there's going to be some pushback from Democrats against bills that Governor Lombardo vetoed that they say, Hey, this would have helped tenants.

This would have been critical when we're facing a housing crisis in this state.

And that's something that we have to kind of take a look at as well.

-Yeah.

And I'll say Senator Flores had this really powerful floor speech during-- before the vote for that gun office, where he said, Look, people, Nevadans want action on gun violence.

They want action.

They want something.

And we haven't been able to pass gun measures, because they've been vetoed in the past and because they're politicized and they're-- so he said, We're just creating an office to study this, to look at this, to figure out directions to get us on some sort of path, and we couldn't even get there.

They're not even willing to have the conversation.

And I think that that is telling about that particular issue and how hard it is to get anything done to make any movement in that.

-You talked about pushback from Democrats.

What about pushback from his own party, the bills that he vetoed that Republicans wanted to get through?

-I'm not really hearing a lot of pushback from Republicans in response to his vetoes at this point.

Most of those vetoes at this point are being celebrated, actually, by the Republicans across the state, especially those gun bills, especially with bills dealing with whether or not schools can work with ICE to allow deportations in schools, things like that.

So there's been a lot of celebrating his veto of those bills.

As far as pushback from within his own party, you are seeing pushback in regards to, you know, the Governor signing the bill that would allow Clark County Commissioners to raise gas taxes.

You know, you're seeing issues on, pushback on those sorts of almost, I would say, more process sort of bills.

But as far as those more controversial measures, I think he is in lockstep with his party.

-We talked off camera, April, about that gas tax.

Can you explain it simply to our viewers?

-Yeah.

So basically it's related to fuel revenue indexing or FRI funding, which I think a lot of people are familiar with that term.

And it basically just ties the-- your gas, the-- what you pay for at the pump to sort of inflation and brings it up and sort of to keep it pace with what it should be.

And it's a huge source of revenue and funding for transportation projects in the state.

And in other parts of the state, in Washoe County, for example, when they established that fund and that FRI, they did not include a provision where it had to go back to voters to be voted on and approved again.

Clark County, they only got it passed by putting it in front of voters.

And so there was really a lot of concern that it would go back to voters next year and that voters would vote it down, because people are sort of generally like anti-tax, but that that would create a crisis where we weren't able to maintain our roads, which we're behind on, and we wouldn't be able to expand, which we need to do.

And so that did receive some bipartisan support, because people recognized that a lot of the chambers and business groups and industry groups, they were all behind it because they recognized that we need transportation funding, and this was the source of that.

And I think Lombardo also sort of knew that, and that's why he signed it.

-Who was not for it, though, were Terrible's gas stations, because you saw them advertising that as you drive along the highway to vote against it.

This brings up, though, Tabitha, an important part of his platform, Governor Lombardo, saying he's not going to raise taxes.

Some people consider this raising taxes.

What do you think?

-So I think that it's interesting, right, because, from his perspective, it's continuing an existing tax.

Now, if you actually look at the legal definition of this, there was a State Supreme Court ruling where they said a continuation of a tax is a new tax.

And that came about because the legislature passed a law without two-thirds, because they were continuing a tax, and then the State Supreme Court said absolutely not, like this is a new tax.

And so I think if you talk to hardcore Republicans and sort of conservatives who take a really strict stance on this, they say that Lombardo is issuing a new tax on that, but he disagrees, right?

So it's sort of the semantics of this.

It was interesting because in 2023, Lombardo signed a provider tax, is what they were called.

Essentially, hospitals voted to tax themselves so that they could receive additional money from the federal government and the state could receive additional money.

That one, Lombardo's team kind of said, Look, we're not actually taxing them because they're choosing to participate in it and it's under an already existing program.

So I think this is definitely going to come up in the election.

I'm sort of curious if it comes up in terms of a Republican challenger.

If Lombardo is challenged by a Republican, that's likely something that that person will say.

-And the loophole with that particular FRI bill is that it doesn't directly raise taxes.

It doesn't directly continue the event.

All it says-- the bill actually says Clark County will be able to do it.

So it's enabling.

It's a bill that enables Clark County to take action, which everybody knows that Clark County is going to take action.

But on paper, it's enabling, and that's what the Governor's Office has said when they've been criticized on social media about that bill.

They say, We're not raising it.

We are allowing Clark County to raise it.

So there's, you know, minute detail that they'll argue about.

-Oh, boy.

Tabitha, have you heard anything about a potential Republican challenger to Governor Lombardo?

-No, not yet.

I think that-- I mean, he's a very popular governor from the Republican perspective.

Typically, you don't see any high-level challengers of an incumbent who's in office.

But I think time will only tell on that one.

-Paul, let's move to what has been signed into law.

Of the bills, what do you think impacts everyday Nevadans the most?

-You know, I think that when you look at a legislative session, there are a lot of bills that nibble around the edges, right?

You're not going to see a lot of bills that take major swings and will change the everyday life of Nevadans, you know, on an ongoing basis.

What you see is a lot of small things.

That being said, I think one of the bigger bills this session was the EDUCATE Act.

That was the education compromise bill between Nicole Cannizzaro and the Governor.

I think that is one of those bills that could have a big effect on education statewide.

Of course, you have the accountability aspects of it, looking at districts and trying to make sure that schools and districts are held accountable to the same standards.

But also you have major investments in early childhood education.

Research has shown that every dollar spent in early childhood education represents $7 in return investment later on in a child's life.

So, I mean, those are big, big deals for families trying to make sure their kids have a good education.

That being said, you know, there is also legislation looking to buy back water rights in the state in over-appropriated basins.

I think that while that is not a huge issue that most Nevadans deal with on a daily basis, I think it is something that really does affect a lot of Nevadans.

We think about water a lot in this state.

-Yeah, I think if you look at consequential bills, I think the FRI bill that we just talked about is huge.

I think people, if they want their roadways, that's a good bill and that we should sort of remember that.

I have another bill that's sort of been overlooked that I think does have some sort of real world impact.

Lombardo signed a bill that prohibits teenagers from working past 11 p.m. on school nights, which means that they can no longer sort of flip burgers at the fast food place till midnight and till 1:00.

And that bill came across because high school students and high school teachers said, Look, huge percentages of our students are coming-- high school students are coming into work or coming into the classroom tired and falling asleep because they were working minimum wage jobs till the middle of the night.

And so that they pushed back and said, Hey, somebody needs to protect us.

As these are our first jobs, we don't understand how to stand up for ourselves.

These are-- and also it impacts education.

It impacts their ability to succeed in school, which would help them in the long run.

There was a big push, and I think there was some concern about whether or not Lombardo might veto that on the grounds that businesses should be able to decide and that, you know-- but he signed it.

And so that means that starting October 1, teenagers should no longer be working between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. on school nights, which I think teachers will celebrate and parents should also celebrate, because I don't, I don't think teenagers should be working super late.

I mean, there's a, you know, there's an argument that some teenagers have to help support their families.

But the reality is, is that's not going to change things in the long run, but education and success in the education space will change families and their trajectory over the long run.

I think that's a win that might get overlooked, but should be celebrated.

-And before I forget about teachers, what happened with their raises, Paul?

-So a vast majority of teachers will not be seeing any additional money, instead of, you know, with the exception maybe small COLAs or small increases that would they would get normally through their contracts.

But there was no major increase that we saw last session, with the exception of charter school teachers.

They did see an increase this session, and that's mainly because they were left out of that large teacher pay package last session.

So really more of a correction there than anything else.

But as far as ongoing pay, no big changes.

-Tabitha, do you want to add anything to any of the bills that were signed into law that you believe will impact everyday Nevadans?

-So there's-- it's not signed yet, but it's likely and expected to be signed, and that is an effort to have to split the state's Department of Health and Human Services into the Nevada Health Authority and the Department of Human Services.

I think that is going to have a massive effect on healthcare in our state.

We're talking about consolidating health insurers under one roof with one sort of guiding authority saying, We are going to negotiate on behalf of state employees.

We're going to negotiate on behalf of Medicaid recipients.

And theoretically, that should allow for lower costs, at least at the state level, specifically, and then it could have reverberating effects outside of that, in terms of, what are we requiring underneath our public employees' benefits plans, what are we requiring under Medicaid, and then how will that expand to private insurers.

So that's something that I'm definitely watching and I think will have a big effect.

And I think that's getting signed, because Governor Lombardo talked about that in his State of the State address and proposed it.

-A huge undertaking as everyone waits to learn what kind of Medicaid funding will come from the federal government.

That's a great point.

The bipartisanship this session, where would you rate it, April?

-It's a good question.

I think that we did see a lot of strong collaboration between Democratic leaders in the legislature and the Governor.

Obviously, the education bill, that was a compromise between Lombardo and Nicole Cannizzaro, was a huge undertaking, and really the fact that they got so much in there and got everyone sort of on board suggests that those two were working together pretty well.

And nobody got everything they wanted, but I think both sides were pretty happy in that compromise, and that shows some-- there's the major crime bill from Lombardo also saw sort of heavy collaboration.

It didn't pass, but was sort of strong there.

So leadership, I think, is there in terms of working together.

And on a lot of the bills, as Tabitha and Paul both know from covering the legislature for several years, a lot of the smaller bills, the ones that we've been talking about, things that, you know, affect hours and business and sort of the everyday issues, a lot of those have bipartisan support.

And a lot of them are willing to-- people are willing to compromise and work together on those things that are not-- the thing we see the partisanship really play out in is this the high profile things--the guns and the charter schools and, you know, things like that we see.

But overall, they usually do work together.

-Where was the film tax credit bill that was backed by Warner Brothers Discovery and Sony fall into that?

Did that-- that had bipartisan support.

-It did, but it also had bipartisan opposition.

So it was-- that was one of those bills, and we've seen that before in sort of huge public subsidy asks is that those things don't fall on party lines.

There are progressive Democrats who will sort of always be against it, because they're against corporations and subsidies for them.

And then there again-- and then, but also that crosses over into sort of far right, not far right, but like the more conservative Republicans who are also against corporations and giving huge money to corporations.

And with those, especially because they're attached to specific areas, we saw a lot of pushback from regional differences, rather than parties.

So like the Northern Nevadans, the lawmakers that represent Northern Nevada, they had to look at that bill and go, What's in this for me?

And there's not much, right?

So those, those bills tend to fall on much different lines.

And so that was not-- the film tax was not something that Democrats, even though they sponsored it, could assume all of the Democrats were going to be on board.

-Tabitha, have you heard anything from Sony or Warner Brothers of their response to this legislation dying?

-No response yet from anybody about the legislation dying.

I think that people were pretty frustrated by the end of session.

I think one thing that is really interesting to me is to see how it plays out in the election, election cycle.

We saw laborers and a lot of unions sort of pushing for this bill.

The Culinary Union, they came out and said, Please support this; we are backing it.

We saw a lot of building and trades groups also advocating for this legislation, and I think they were pretty upset when this didn't make it through the Senate.

And I could see that sort of taking hold in the next campaign cycle of saying, Hey, you didn't support us.

We're going to run candidates against you, or we're going to support your opponents.

-And especially if you, if you go back into Nevada history, Aaron Ford, when he was in the legislature, actually pushed film tax credit.

That was sort of his big revitalization act years ago.

So it would be sort of funny, actually, if it ends up being a major campaign issue, because he has a history of supporting that program.

I don't-- he hasn't, I think, spoken on where he stands on it now or whether or not he supported the current proposals, but certainly he has.

He should have opinions and some expertise and interest in that issue.

So we, like he said, like Tabitha said, it could very much be a campaign issue.

-Once again, we are hearing from several legislators there just wasn't enough time in the session, which begs the question, does Nevada need another session, a session each year, instead of biannually?

Nevada is just one of four states that still has biannual legislative sessions.

Paul, is there any talk of that happening?

Do you think that might have some action?

-I think there are a lot of people who would like to see that happen.

But actual talk, no, not seriously.

I think there is a push, very quietly, to maybe have something closer, more akin to what Utah does, very short annual sessions.

But right now, there's no real serious consideration, because it would, it would require, I think, an actual constitutional amendment.

And there's a lot of talk of, If you're doing that, why not change the place of where the legislature can meet and having legislative sessions in Las Vegas.

But I think at this point, those are both pipe dreams.

-Gosh, how controversial would that be, Tabitha, to have a legislative session in Las Vegas?

-I think some of this also has to do with costs as well, right?

Like annual legislative sessions are going to increase costs.

It's harder to take time off if you have a citizen legislature.

It raises all sorts of questions that I don't know if the state is ready to address yet.

I mean, we couldn't even get something across to look at legislative pay, which hasn't really changed recently, right?

And how do we encourage people who are volunteering their time to run for office if they have to take off six months every single year is one question that I've heard from people who are sort of pushed back against this annual idea, if there aren't other changes made at the same time?

-I think we have seen, certainly, an increase in the number of special sessions in the last few years, and some of those were beyond anyone's control.

Obviously, we had a COVID special session that was required because of the impact of COVID.

I think there's a lot of people who assume, and there's been a lot of talk, that there's going to be a special session probably later this year after the federal government does whatever it's going to do to Medicaid and sort of these huge, really big budget programs.

And so we may just see a movement more towards special sessions and more towards-- and, obviously, we had the A's special session.

You know, I think you could interpret the silence on the film tax credit as potentially that there's still movement behind the scenes, and maybe someday it'll just emerge and be like, Hey, we're gonna have a special session for this.

So I think we could see more of that.

That's more realistic in terms of the legislature meeting more and doing things.

You see that in a lot of other states where a lot of the lawmakers and all of the stakeholders, as they like to say, do all of the deal making behind the scenes and then they call a special session and pass everything that's already been sort of negotiated.

So I think we could see a movement, a movement more towards that.

-Okay.

So last show we talked about the end of the session in which Republican Senator Ira Hansen filibustered at the end and perhaps prevented several bills from getting to the Governor's desk.

The Governor's Office is responding to some of that, and how are they responding, Tabitha?

-So we actually asked the Governor's Office about this, because when we took a closer look, we actually realized that the bill, which the one we're mainly talking about here is Governor Joe Lombardo's crime bill, never actually ended up in the Senate for a concurrence vote.

It was stuck in a printer is what it looks like, you know, on NELIS, the Nevada legislative website.

So we're still diving into that.

But when we asked Governor Joe Lombardo's office about, you know, sort of his statement, he sort of implied that the legislative leadership had wasted their time, had frittered away the session, had waited until the final hours to get everything through.

And this was a-- and the bill death, along with other bill deaths, was the result of that.

Now, we did hear from sources close to the Assembly's Office that the Assembly sort of said, Look, we did our part, we showed up, we were ready to pass legislation, and the holdup was on the Senate side.

And so I think that that's something that is very interesting, and I'm not totally sure what the political implications of it are yet, but I'm sure that we'll be hearing more about it in the coming weeks.

-And it is an undisputable fact that this legislative session there were more bills passed in the final days than in previous ones.

So that's, that's a number that's not Joe Lombardo, you know, posturing or anything like that.

It's true they passed a record number of bills, I think, in the last final days, including bills that had sort of sat there and were ready to go for several weeks.

So there is something to say about the legislative process and why things aren't moving until the last second.

And that might be political, but it's, you know, it's certainly something that needs to be examined.

-Yeah.

I think in another two years, we'll be sitting here saying probably the same kind of thing.

Thank you so much for joining us for this important discussion.

And thank you for watching.

To learn more about the legislation discussed in this show, go to vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek, and I will see you next week on Nevada Week.