(Ira Hansen) In literally the last minutes of the Nevada-- whatever session this is.

It's almost midnight.

My mind is going every which direction.

But this is wrong.

It's wrong to try to slip this sort of thing through.

(Amber Renee Dixon) A fiery finish to Nevada's legislative session with a midnight deadline killing several high profile bills.

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.

The 2025 legislative session is over, and it's now Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo's turn to weigh in on the bills that passed both the Assembly and Senate ahead of a midnight deadline on Monday.

Two of his own bills fell victim to that deadline, and so did a high profile measure to make Las Vegas a Hollywood 2.0.

Joining me to explain what led to all of that, as well as what was accomplished this session are Tabitha Mueller, Capitol Bureau Chief at 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.

And Tabitha, I want to start with you.

You are up in Carson City.

You were there on Monday night, and I think you saw Senator Ira Hansen, who we showed at the top of the show, explaining why he was so shocked.

And what was the reason for his shock exactly?

(Tabitha Mueller) So I think that what Senator Ira Hansen had said is that he was upset about a proposed resolution that would have made changes to the Nevada Legislative Commission, and that commission sort of oversees operations at the Nevada legislature.

And what it would have done was reduce the number of lawmakers-- Republicans on the commission from three to two.

And I think he was just sort of upset at the timing of it, the process, the way that there wasn't much discussion around it, and we didn't even have the bill language when he was raising these concerns.

So we were still a little unclear at that point about what exact changes were being made.

-Tabitha, you told me off camera you've covered three legislative sessions now.

What was your takeaway from this?

What did you think?

-I was really surprised.

I haven't seen anything like this happen, right, the end of the session, we're talking the last 15 minutes, Senator Ira Hansen standing up and basically filibustering.

And that was a new one to me.

-Paul, what did you think?

(Paul Boger) Yeah.

It was absolutely a little different.

We don't usually see legislative sessions end with a series of parliamentary procedure questions.

But this, this resolution to change the Legislative Commission, you know, it has pretty far reaching impact on what happens in between sessions, too.

I don't think the importance of the Interim Commission or Legislative Commission could be downplayed, considering we go about 20 months in between legislative sessions in the state.

So the Interim Commission, the Legislative Commission, and the Interim Finance Committee, another body that is appointed by the lawmakers, those are incredibly important committees.

So changing up the makeup of them is something you probably want to have a conversation about.

But you know, we see a bill like that come in the last hour of the session, it's definitely going to raise some eyebrows.

-Yeah, and Senator Hansen was not alone.

It was also Senate Minority Leader Robin Titus, who stood up and said she was not doing this as a shenanigan, not just to delay the process, but that this was about the right of people to be represented.

What did you think when you were watching all that?

(April Corbin Girnus) You know, it was clearly coordinated and planned on that part.

-Really?

-Robin Titus stood up and spoke.

And, you know, for a lot-- when the filibustering started, it actually started with Stavros Anthony, the Lieutenant Governor, not coming into the chambers.

And then Marilyn Dondero Loop, who serves as like backup for him, presiding over it, she started to take over and do things.

Then Ira Hansen stands up and says, Lieutenant Governor is supposed to be here.

Why is he not here?

Then he sort of strolls in, and there's back and forth about this.

Then it was very clear at that point from everybody in the room that something was happening, and it was very coordinated, because-- -When you say "coordinated," do you mean to delay other bills?

-You know it was-- Robin Titus explained it afterward as it-- she said it was not related to-- like, the film tax credit was not related to the crime bill or the healthcare bill, or some of those high profile bills that died.

It was merely a protest over the Legislative Commission resolution and the fact that it had been pushed at the last second.

And there's been an ongoing theme, I think, in the legislature from the Minority party being frustrated about not getting things until the last second and being left out of the process.

And they've been sort of openly critical about Democrats not wanting to work with them unless they have to.

If they need a two-thirds vote and they need Republicans, they'll work with them.

But if they don't, they're like, we're going to do whatever we want.

I think that frustration boiled into this Legislative Commission resolution.

-That final evening.

So Tabitha, that issue did take up time, and some argued, yeah, it could have been used to pass more bills.

But I think there are also several Nevadans who are wondering, well, why did so much important legislation get left to the very last minute?

How would you respond to that?

I mean, the session started four months ago.

-Right.

I think the thing that we need to understand here is that oftentimes we're seeing the passage of bills right at the last minute.

Now, should they have been left to last minute?

Should lawmakers have sort of had time to debate them and spend more time on them?

That is probably a yes, right?

I think most people agree that it's better to have a hearing and be very clear about what's moving forward, but I think that some of the issues stem from the fact that the Governor's bills weren't brought until toward the end of the session, and we're talking massive policy bills across healthcare, crime, economic development.

And when they came, there needed to be some changes in negotiations.

Now, what was interesting is that earlier on in the day, the Governor's Chief of Staff, the Governor himself, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, and Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, all met together in Senate Majority Leader Cannizzaro's office.

And when they left, there was sort of this indication that, look, we are going to get these across the finish line.

And I think that the filibustering that we saw that night really led to the death of a few of those measures.

-I think that, you know, this is also a little bit of a process problem, too, right?

We have the Legislative Council Bureau, which is tasked with essentially running the day-to-day operations of the legislature.

That includes writing all of these bills, all of these amendments.

So when you've got just a handful of people in a back office trying to handle pretty much every single piece of legislation that's coming through the legislature, it's going to take time, and I think that is one of those areas where we continue to see a bottleneck within the process.

Now, when it comes to the backlash for the Governor, for lawmakers, it remains to be seen, right?

Because in addition to not passing these bills, lawmakers, Democrats particularly, added a number of poison pills to some of this legislation.

When it comes to the healthcare bill, there was a standalone emergency room provision that a number of Republicans had problems with.

There was changes to the Governor's crime bill that really, that were made late on Sunday and were really looked at on Monday.

And public defenders, people who have been looking for criminal justice reform in the state for the last 10 years, saw that bill, and it was really a come-to-Jesus moment.

They were very upset with what they saw come from the Governor's office and from Democratic lawmakers.

So those bills dying, I think while they may have political ramifications in the election next year, I think as a state, there's not going to be much difference.

-Okay.

So you mentioned-- oh, Tabitha, go ahead.

-I just wanted to jump in, because I think that the question here is, how does this play out in the election cycle.

Governor Joe Lombardo is up for re-election next year.

This was his chance to really pass some priority legislation.

And when you look at what he got across, he sort of issued a statement saying, Look, my priorities were education and they were also housing.

And those two bills did pass.

We can talk about those later, but all of this is going to come out in campaign ads, in the election cycle, as lawmakers either tout what they succeeded in doing or criticize the other side for not doing X, Y, and Z, or filibustering, or, you know, not getting legislation through.

-April, how good of a position is Governor Lombardo in following this session as he enters re-election?

-You know, I'm not a paid political-- but I think pretty well.

I mean, you know, I think there were no major sort of flubs.

I mean, obviously Democrats are going to go after him, and he's gonna probably take some heat for being a former sheriff of Clark County who didn't pass crime bill or something.

That was, I think-- I think he is downplaying how much of that he ran on last time, and I think people will remember that.

I think maybe one moment that stands out is actually related to housing, is that Democratic State Senator Dina Neal proposed a bill to look at corporate ownership of homes, which is an issue that a lot of people care about.

She wanted to limit the number of homes they could buy.

And Ira Hansen, on the floor again earlier in the session, came out before the floor vote and said, Governor Lombardo called me and told me not to vote for this, so I'm not going to, even though Ira Hansen had supported an almost identical measure two years ago.

So it was, you know-- and Ira Hansen was very clear that he would have voted for that if not for the Governor.

I think that kind of shows you some of the political play that's going on here is that the Governor didn't want that bill, but he didn't want to veto it, because that would be a bad look, because I do think the majority of Americans and Nevadans are particularly sensitive about that particular issue, and they want homes to go to Nevadans.

And so that's one of those issues that may come up and doesn't look good.

That's a campaign ad I can sort of see being made already.

But the rest of it, it's, you know, we'll see.

He did do a lot of education stuff, and obviously some of that got merged into Senator Cannizzaro's bill, but I think he'll still classify that as a win.

-Right, because Tabitha had mentioned that he got two bills passed, but really he just got one bill passed, and that was housing, because education was lumped into Senator Cannizzaro's bill?

-Absolutely.

Sorry, I should have clarified that, because technically he only got one bill passed, but a lot of his priorities were woven into the Senate Majority Leader's bill.

And that was a compromise between the Governor's office and her office.

And so when we say-- I think that some of this is going to come down to nuance, because Democrats could say, Well, the Governor only got one bill passed, but the Governor can say, Look, my priorities made it through.

So I think that's a really important clarification, and that language is going to likely appear in the election cycle.

-And he did push certain other education items in other bills.

So, I mean, I think the open zoning bill was separate from Cannizzaro's, and there was a transportation for charter schools thing that he sort of helped.

So there were other aspects of overall education that were clearly priorities of him that I think made it through.

-Well, and even look at the bill to get charter school teacher raises.

That's something that he talked about in the State of the State Address.

They initially cut it from his budget recommendation because they wanted to put some-- because Democrats wanted to put some guardrails around that.

And then it did pass in the form of Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager's bill to address that.

-It's important to note that like it's not that lawmakers had a lot of choice in passing that charter school teacher pay raise bill.

Governor Lombardo said pretty early on that he would be willing to even veto the state education budget if there wasn't charter teacher raises in there.

So that was something where Democratic lawmakers had to move on, or they were going to be stuck having a much larger conversation about education funding at the end of the session, even possibly forcing us into a special session.

-Tabitha?

-I was just gonna note, too, that we didn't just see this with education.

I mean, some of Governor Joe Lombardo's healthcare priorities also passed into other pieces of legislation.

There was a workforce provider shortage program that was amended into Senate Majority Leader Cannizzaro's bill.

There was also a graduate medical education component that Senator Julie Pazina, she's a Democrat, had already been working on that was placed into there.

So it's really important to kind of pay attention to the policy as well as the bills that made their way through.

-And Tabitha, on that education bill, what was the biggest win for Governor Lombardo?

What was the biggest win for Senator Cannizzaro?

-Oh, that's a tough one.

I mean, that's-- we're talking about some massive pieces of legislation here, and there's a lot in those bills.

I think one of the things I really paid attention to was pre-K.

There was some funding in there to help expand pre-K education programs that Senator Cannizzarro had really highlighted.

I think jointly, both lawmakers had really emphasized the need for accountability on education and school systems.

I think that we saw some, also some provisions from Governor Joe Lombardo's legislation to kind of say, Hey, when we're looking through this, let's make sure that low-performing schools, there are consequences for that.

He didn't get exactly what he wanted, right?

We are talking about a compromise here.

-Yeah.

Paul, can you help me understand what those consequences might be?

-So the consequences, let's look at the bills themselves.

So you've got-- or the bill itself.

You've got-- I think one of the largest pieces of win, or the largest win for the Governor is probably the accountability aspect of it.

And that accountability aspect really comes down to a lot more leeway for the State or the District to come into underperforming schools and districts and either take them over or to make changes at the top, really just trying to find ways that the District and the State itself can go into these underperforming schools, look at what reasons they may be underperforming, and then trying to take steps to address it from an administrative point of view.

You know, you have that aspect of it.

I think Tabitha is right, the pre-K stuff is really big for Senate Majority Leader Cannizzaro.

I'm really interested to see how this is going to play out when it comes to CCSD.

You know, CCSD has had a number of issues in recent years when it comes to budgeting, when it comes to making sure that their finances are-- where they should be at the time they should be, right?

We always hear-- we've heard last year there was a deficit, then there wasn't a deficit, We should be good on money this year.

So I think when there's issues like that, that normally you wouldn't see the State step in and be like, Hey, what's going on here, this bill does give the State Department of Education the ability to start going into those districts and really taking a look at what's going on.

-April, as you understand it, the new superintendent of the Clark County School District, is she on board with all of this?

She was part of the Governor's original piece of legislation, which then got merged into Cannizzaro's bill.

-Yeah.

I mean, I think that the-- having not spoken to Jhone Ebert, the new superintendent, I do think that largely she seems to be on board.

I think we can assume that she's on board and willing to work with the Governor and even the legislature, who might not know that Governor Lombardo actually endorsed her for that position.

He wrote a letter of recommendation that was submitted to the Clark County School Board when they were making that vote, which is-- you don't usually see governors weighing in on that role, I think, in the past.

So he was clearly in her court and wanted her in there.

I think that shows that he has faith in her and that she must have a good working relationship with her.

At the same time, Marilyn Dondero Loop, who's a Democrat who runs the education committee, I think, in the legislature, she also endorsed Jhone Ebert, so they were both on board with her.

And I think that shows a willingness to work there.

She understands this environment.

I think she understands this critical point we're at in this sort of post-Jesus Jara administration of CCSD, and I think everybody has a vested interest in trying to fix the problems that we all know about within school district.

So it's definitely-- I think they're-- I think they're all working together.

Whether or not that gets executed remains to be seen, because it's a very complex subject, but I think they're moving in the right direction, and, really, it seems like all together.

-And Tabitha and Paul, I didn't get to ask each of you how you would rate the Governor's success following this session.

But Tabitha, you start, and also will you tell us about the win he did have with the housing bill.

-Yeah.

So his housing legislation made it across the finish line.

It was-- I incorrectly said earlier there were two, but it was really just one.

His housing legislation made it across the finish line.

What that one does that I think is really critical is it actually increases funding for this kind of pocket that we call "attainable" housing.

And that's for folks that are not low income, but they might be middle income earners who maybe are struggling to break into the housing market because they don't have enough for a down payment or just because housing costs are so high.

So I think developing-- it'll be interesting to see how that works out and plays out when it comes to developing homes targeted at more middle income earners.

And I think that legislation is one that Lombardo is going to carry with him into the election cycle.

We know that housing is a critical issue for Nevadans, as it is across the country.

And the one thing that I will point out is we're still waiting on the Governor's vetoes.

Democrats have proposed and put forward a large number of bills that relate to housing policy changes, and so what I'm curious to see is which ones he's going to veto, which ones will move forward, and how Democrats will attack or support those pieces of legislation when it comes out.

-When we did cover the housing bill on this show initially, unions were against it because it did not require a prevailing wage for the construction of public housing.

What ended up happening there?

-So there were exemptions in the bill that explicitly said we don't need a prevailing wage.

Those exemptions were taken out.

So we don't see any requirements around no prevailing wage for these projects, that kind of thing.

-Okay.

You can't get out of this, Tabitha, but I'm going to go to Paul first.

Paul, how well do you think the Governor did this session?

And then Tabitha, that question is for you as well.

-I think the Governor did about just as well as he could have, with a Democratic Speaker and a Democratic Majority Leader in place across the way.

You know, he got his priorities.

I think Tabitha was exactly right earlier.

She talked about the Governor's priorities being approved.

He's going to get some wins out of this session.

Not just that, we did see a number of his priorities and policies get placed into other bills, not just in education, not just in housing, you know, in healthcare as well.

So those little things that we saw are definitely going to add up and be big wins later for Joe Lombardo.

When it comes to the election itself, we're still very early on.

It looks like Attorney General Aaron Ford is going to be his primary challenger at this point, barring more entries into the governor's race.

All that being said is that the Governor had some big bills come out this session.

I don't know if any of his current competitors have that same ability to say that.

So I think this is going to be a good session for him.

-And also it's worth noting that Joe Lombardo avoided certain topics that certainly would have not been successful.

So we'll see.

I'll go back to the last session two years ago.

He really pushed education school choice and opportunity scholarships.

He wanted that to be a big thing.

He didn't even that this time around, and I think it's because he knows that was a no-go for Democrats.

Democrats have said they are not for school vouchers and that they don't approve that program, so Lombardo didn't even try.

I think that was a push he made last time because it was good coming out of the gate as a Republican in his first session, and he's going hard, trying to do a lot of stuff.

That was never going to go anywhere.

We all knew that two years ago, but it wasn't even sort of a negotiating point in this session.

I think that was active on sort of everyone's part, because Lombardo doesn't want to be-- not be able to deliver on that sort of key issue, which he did really push two years ago.

So it's kind of interesting to see that the battles that Lombardo chose this session were very strategic and very much things that he knew could get across the finish line.

I mean, something like his housing bill had a lot of stuff that was favorable to developers, and Democrats are also really favorable to developers and business here in the state.

As much as Republicans like to say they're not, they really are.

It's a very pro-business state on both chambers and both sides of the aisle.

What wasn't in Lombardo's bill, sort of Tabitha alluded to, it was eviction protections and rent stabilization, and some things, habitability issues in terms of how, how crappy landlords are allowed to keep their rental units.

Things like that weren't in those bills.

And I think that's really, when it comes to what is a weakness for Lombardo is how much Democrats push those things that could have helped Nevadans who are struggling today.

-Tabitha, you do get out of that question, because we have to move to the-- Okay, I'll let you go, but then you need to pick up on the film tax bill, because we're running out of time.

-Happy to touch on the film tax bill.

I think one thing, and Paul and-- they all covered it well, but I think the one thing I would add is last session Lombardo emphasized the need for voter ID, and that was something he didn't-- he pushed very bipartisan issues this session, but he did get a win in voter ID, because Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager passed a voter ID requirement measure, basically saying that we're already going to see this likely because of the voter ID ballot measure that's going forward.

It passed with more than 70% approval last year, and it's expected to pass again.

And so Lombardo got a big win there that I think we're going to see in campaigns, in discussions, and I know that I dodged the number, but I think he did very, very well this session, considering everything he was up against.

-Okay, so there were two film tax credit bills.

One of them, the Assembly Bill had the backing of Sony Pictures and Warner Brothers Discovery.

It narrowly passed the Assembly, I believe on Friday night, then it got to the Senate on Monday.

And what in the world happened, Paul?

-Your guess is as good as mine as why that bill died.

But I mean, to be honest-- yeah, I was talking about this bill all session.

Every time I brought it up with lawmakers, it was, you know, there was a lot of support for the idea.

I don't think any of our lawmakers in any legislature we've ever elected in the state has said no to jobs willingly.

But this particular bill had a really big price tag, $1.5 billion over 15 years, $120 million a year, starting in the 2027-28 biennium.

So a lot of money.

I just think that with the current fiscal picture being what it is in the state and then on top of it, in a couple months, we're talking about having a special session to look at federal funding, it was a much harder sell to be good lawmakers be like, Look, we know we have a little bit of a money problem now, but in a couple of years, we might be okay and should have some film tax credits, right?

I think when you're trying to have that conversation at the same time you're looking at, you know, only adding a couple of dollars to education funding when you're already, according to the State Finance Committee, $4 billion underfunded, it's a much different conversation.

And I think once that bill became a study, it was done.

-I think, also, I think the appetite for major subsidies for corporations is, I think, a harder sell each session, it seems like.

And I go back to the A's baseball stadium that was approved in a special session after the last regular session in 2023, a closer vote than the Allegiant Stadium was a few years earlier.

And I think people are just-- and the stadium, the baseball stadium being so recent in memory, like that baseball stadium hasn't been built yet and we're already going off and talking about the next big thing we need to do.

I think that's a hard sell.

I think there were a lot of Nevadans and voters who were sort of like, Is this really what we want to do?

And I think Hollywood also has a different sort of connotation and aura than other industries where, you know, I think Nevadans pride themselves on not liking California.

So taking a major California industry, wasn't a great sell for a lot of people.

There were certainly people who were invested in that, people in the entertainment industry, film, lighting, people, unions, you know, they had some stuff in there.

But I think, I think it was just a harder sell, even independent of some of our, you know, bigger financial issues.

-Tabitha, last question for you: Is the Hollywood 2.0 dream over for Las Vegas?

-I think a lot of the proponents of those two bills had said, this is our last chance.

We saw that over and over again.

We did hear this proposal in 2023, but it wasn't able to get off the ground.

I think time is going to tell on that question whether they're going to make a renewed push.

But I would say right now, based off of what people had said, probably not.

But I don't have a crystal ball.

-Anyone want to add quickly?

No.

-No.

[laughter] -All right.

Tabitha Mueller, Paul Boger, April Corbin Girnus, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week.

And thank you for watching.

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

♪♪♪