Nevada
Nevada Gov. Lombardo seeks stiffer penalties for theft, faster election results
Striking an optimistic tone and urging bipartisanship, Gov. Joe Lombardo delivered a State of the State address Wednesday night with proposals to finish vote counting on Election Day, make more thefts qualify as felonies, and get more homes and apartments built.
“The state of our state is steadily improving,” he said. “We are certainly headed in the right direction and the outlook is positive.”
“Combining the collective will of the 63 of you and me, we can build more than houses; we can convert Nevada’s promise into reality, a place where every family can thrive, every community can grow, and every dream can find a home,” Lombardo said, referencing the number of state Senate and Assembly members. “That’s the Nevada way.”
The Republican governor’s desire to work together this year comes as no surprise given that in 2023, the majority-Democrat Legislature called Lombardo’s bluff by passing bills the governor said he wouldn’t sign. He delivered a record 75 vetoes.
After November’s election, he still faces a Legislature where Democrats dominate but do not hold a supermajority, making his veto pen a real threat in negotiations. Bipartisanship will be required to get approval for significant bills.
His remarks were greeted with punctuations of applause from lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle. Along with frequent water-bottle breaks, he got looser as he went along, smiling, addressing people in the gallery and going off-script to make a few jokes.
He announced a $12.7 billion budget that he said would make teacher pay raises permanent and extend them to charter school teachers.
The next legislative session starts Feb. 3 and officially lasts 120 days.
Nevada Gov. Lombardo’s top 5 proposals
Lombardo, a former Clark County sheriff, summarized five priorities he plans to push in the Legislature.
Before announcing them, he told the gallery of lawmakers at the Nevada Assembly, “I would ask that before some of you say ‘No,’ work with me, collaborate with my agency heads, ask questions, give input, offer alternatives and set aside partisan politics.”
• Nevada Housing Attainability Act: Lombardo said this proposal would streamline permits, reduce building fees and prioritize state funding that will support $1 billion in new “attainable” housing units across Nevada, rather than the buzzword of “affordable.”
He blamed Nevada’s housing crisis on the federal government’s reluctance to release some of its land — it controls more than 80% of the state — and said that he expects President-elect Donald Trump to help make that happen “but, while we press for federal action, we’re not waiting.”
Also highlighted was the recent approval of a $200 million public-private partnership to provide homeless services called the Campus for Hope.
• Nevada Healthcare Access Act: Lombardo noted that, “With some of the lowest provider-to-patient ratios in the nation, far too many Nevadans are left waiting for care or worse, going without it.”
To partly address this, he said, he would propose that by 2028, all health insurance plans in Nevada will be required to adopt standardized and digitized prior authorization plans, reducing delays for patients and providers.
He said he would double the state’s investment in graduate medical education and incentivize providers to set up in underserved areas. The plan would also create an Office of Mental Health to expand access to behavioral health services and improve coordination of care.
• Nevada Accountability in Education Act: Lombardo said he would revisit his efforts to expand school choice, after noting he’s unsatisfied with Nevada consistently ranking near the bottom nationally on education measurements.
“No child should be trapped in a failing school because of their ZIP code or held down because of how much their parents or grandparents earn,” he said.
He added his bill proposal would include “transportation support” to help families choose other schools for their children.
• Nevada Safe Streets and Neighborhoods Act: This would reduce the amount of a theft that would trigger a felony charge and increase penalties for repeat offenders.
It would also prohibit the use of diversion courts for offenders who commit crimes against children or the elderly.
• Economic Development Policy Reform Act: Earlier in his remarks, Lombardo mentioned Nevada’s highest-in-the-nation unemployment rate of 5.7%. His economic plan would give tax credits to childcare facilities so that they could potentially charge lower rates and help more people enter the workforce.
• Creating More Government Effectiveness: He vowed to evaluate each of the state government’s more than 300 boards and commissions to see which ones have outlived their usefulness.
Democratic responses to Gov. Lombardo
Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, Democrat Steve Yeager, gave a recorded response to Lombardo’s State of the State.
“This past November, Nevada voters again overwhelmingly voted for Democrats to lead our state Legislature,” he said.
Asking the governor not to break his veto record from the previous session, he urged that Lombardo work with Democrats while also emphasizing differences with Republicans.
Democratic legislators, he said, will:
- Strongly reject any Republican efforts to restrict abortion rights.
- Oppose any proposal that would make it harder to vote — despite lopsided support for a voter ID law in November.
- Prioritize “common sense gun violence prevention measures because guns are all too often used in violent crime.”
In response to Lombardo’s crime proposal, Yeager said, “We must not backtrack to the failed ‘tough on crime’ legislation of the 1990s that was expensive, wasteful and ineffective without making us any safer.”
Democratic groups also released statements criticizing Lombardo.
Nevada State Democratic Party executive director Hilary Barrett sent out a lengthy, detailed memo criticizing Lombardo’s first two years in office.
“When it comes to housing, health care, education and public safety, Nevadans are measurably worse off due to the actions of Lombardo and his commitment to prioritizing powerful special interests and his own political self-interest,” she said.
Laura Martin, executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, said corporate landlords are artificially inflating housing costs and that the governor’s proposal to use federal land for more housing will make things worse.
“Lombardo’s plan that promotes urban sprawl as a solution to the housing crisis will only exacerbate the existing climate crisis, when we should be prioritizing infill,” she said.
“We should be investing in the future of Nevada by making sure our aging communities and schools are climate resilient, not with another stadium, movie studio, or mass deportations.”
Mark Robison is the state politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal, with occasional forays into other topics. Email comments to mrobison@rgj.com or comment on Mark’s Greater Reno Facebook page.
Nevada
Southern Nevada sees string of shootings, one person killed in 24-hour span
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Las Vegas Metro Police are investigating multiple shootings that occurred across Southern Nevada within a 24-hour period, including one that turned deadly.
The violence began Thursday evening near Flamingo Road and Linq Lane, when officers attempted to stop a stolen vehicle. The driver sped away, driving into oncoming traffic and nearly causing crashes across the valley.
Crime
Stolen car chase leads to fatal officer-involved shooting, LVMPD investigating
The pursuit ended with 3 suspects fleeing on foot. When one armed suspect refused to drop his weapon, officers opened fire, killing him. The remaining suspects were taken into custody.
Hours later, police responded to a deadly shooting at a business in the northeast valley near Craig Road and Nellis Boulevard. Officers arrived to find a man and a woman suffering from gunshot wounds in the parking lot.
Crime
Police searching for suspect after shooting in northeast valley leaves one dead
The woman was transported to the hospital and is expected to survive. The man died at the scene.
Detectives say the victims had been arguing with another man when he opened fire and fled. Officials are asking for the public’s help in identifying and locating the suspect as the investigation continues.
About 30 minutes after that shooting, Metro officers responded to another shooting near the intersection of Rancho Drive and Lake Mead Boulevard, where they found a man with a gunshot wound to the leg.
Traffic
Police activity blocks off all lanes on eastbound Lake Mead Blvd., Rancho Dr.
He was transported to the hospital and is expected to recover. Detectives are investigating.
Overnight, a fourth shooting shut down Craig Road from Lamont Street to Nellis Boulevard. A victim was found with non-life-threatening injuries, and a suspect was detained.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
Nevada
Caltech readies to build world’s most sensitive radio telescope in Nevada
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Caltech researchers are preparing to build a radio telescope that will be the most sensitive ever constructed and survey the sky 100 times faster than any other radio telescope worldwide.
Schmidt Sciences has greenlit construction of the Deep Synoptic Array after the project completed its final design review. The milestone paves the way for construction to begin on the telescope, which is planned for a remote valley in Nevada.
MORE ON FOX5: Conservation groups oppose potential sale of federal lands highlighted in land mapping tool
The array will consist of 1,650 radio dishes, each slightly more than 6 meters in diameter. The array will span an area of about 20 by 16 kilometers. The team plans to build the telescope by 2029, with science operations commencing soon after.
Survey capabilities
“The DSA will survey the entire visible sky several times in its first five years at unprecedented speeds,” said Gregg Hallinan, principal investigator of DSA, professor of astronomy at Caltech, and director of Caltech’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory. “While all other radio telescopes combined have so far found about 20 million radio sources, the DSA will match that in the first day of operations. By the end of its initial survey, it will have discovered about 1 billion new radio sources.”
The telescope will discover radio emission from millions of stars, galaxies, and other cosmic objects. It will address the mysteries of black holes, pulsars and fast radio bursts. It will also probe the physics of dark matter and gravity, and it will measure the structure and expansion of the universe.
“Radio astronomy is about to go from sketch to photograph,” said Vikram Ravi, the co-principal investigator of the DSA and a professor of astronomy at Caltech. “The DSA is looking at a far larger volume of the universe far more often than any other telescope.”
Real-time imaging
The DSA will be capable of making images in real time. The numerous radio dishes will feed into a supercomputer that creates images instantly. The images will be immediately accessible to the worldwide astronomical community.
“Without the radio camera, we would have to store 100 exabytes of data to complete our survey,” Hallinan said. “This would require 5 million hard drives in a multi-billion-dollar facility the size of multiple football fields. The radio camera solves this problem.”
The DSA’s radio camera will convert the raw data to images in real time with the help of an off-site supercomputer built from Graphics Processing Units built by Nvidia. The radio camera images will be given freely to the public with no proprietary period.
“We want the whole world to also have access to the data just as quickly as we do,” said Katie Jameson, the DSA lead project manager.
The DSA will have the ability to detect more than 100,000 intensely powerful flashes of radio light from fast radio bursts and to localize them to their home galaxies. The DSA will also reveal more than 20,000 new pulsars.
“The science that can be done is endless,” Hallinan said. “There will be enough discoveries to occupy every radio astronomer on the planet.”
The DSA is led by Caltech and funded by Schmidt Sciences. It is part of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Observatory System. Two pathfinder projects that led to the DSA, the DSA-110 and the OVRO Long Wavelength Array, were funded by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright 2026 KVVU. All rights reserved.
Nevada
Conservation groups oppose potential sale of federal lands highlighted in land mapping tool
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Conservation groups are pushing back against a new state mapping tool that identifies federal lands potentially available for development in Nevada.
The governor’s office, in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management Nevada, unveiled the interactive map this week to make it easier to find federal land that may be available for development throughout the state and in the Las Vegas Valley.
“It is shocking to look at the map and see how many lands could potentially be sold off,” said Olivia Tanager, executive director of the Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter.
Tanager said she was surprised at how many federal lands were identified for disposal when she first looked at the map.
“Places like Red Rock and Sloan Canyon in Southern Nevada are what draw people to live in Southern Nevada. We cannot continue to develop right up onto the boundaries or perhaps even in these precious places,” Tanager said.
The conservation group says the mapping tool is the latest effort to treat Nevada’s public lands as a real estate inventory rather than a shared public resource.
“We know that a lot of these areas are environmentally sensitive. We know that there are endangered species on these lands,” Tanager said.
MORE ON FOX5: Nevada unveils interactive tool mapping federal lands available for possible development, other uses
Housing concerns
Lawmakers have proposed using federal lands to create more affordable housing. Several areas at the edges of the Vegas Valley have been identified for potential development on the mapping tool. Tanager said she does not see that as a viable solution.
“The areas on the outskirts or far outside of existing urban areas are wholly inappropriate for affordable housing. Housing that is located that far away from services will never be truly affordable,” Tanager said. “As folks have to live further and further away from resources like schools and grocery stores, transportation costs go up substantially.”
The conservation group says the valley should fill in open lots and build upward within the existing urban core instead of building outward.
“We know that sprawl and developing on the outskirts of the valley worsens air quality as well from increased transportation,” Tanager said. “We know that sprawl is incredibly water-intensive. The further out you build, the harder it is to recapture that water.”
The Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter says treating federal lands as disposable assets could set a dangerous precedent that accelerates privatization efforts and undermines the principle that public lands should remain in public hands for future generations.
Approximately 85% of Nevada’s total land area is owned by the federal government.
The state says the tool is designed to bolster information sharing about federal lands. The mapping tool is available here.
Copyright 2026 KVVU. All rights reserved.
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