The clock is ticking until “sine die,” which is a Latin phrase that translates to final adjournment for the nevada legislature.
It’s a commonly used phrase you’ll hear passed around in the halls of the Nevada State Capitol Complex in Carson City during these final days.
The biggest ticket item on the agenda is of course the $7-billion s appropriations budget, which is currently in stalemate.
Governor Lombardo vetoed it, and the legislature is currently working to bring it back to his desk for a signature before sine die.
However, another big ticket item is the Capital Improvements Project.
“The Governor and the leaders of both houses are working very hard on that trying to figure out how they’re going to spend those Capital Improvement Project dollars. Those are big spending projects for giant construction companies in Nevada there’s a lot of play with that. Should that be the priority at the moment? The irony is that we had an extra $9-billion dollars of federal dollars because of all the monies from frankly the Trump and Biden administrations during Covid, so we have a lot of money for what we call one-shot appropriations type things,” said (R – Elko/Sparks) Ira Hansen.
The state is looking to expand to Southern Nevada with the purchase of eighteen new ready-to-go office buildings, for legal, research, auditing, and other matters.
But, legislators are not seeing eye-to-eye on a proposal to turn three of those buildings into Legislative Council Bureau buildings.
Sources confirm with us that it would essentially be building a second Nevada State Capital Complex in Las Vegas.
Senate Minority Leader Heidi Seevers Gansert say it’s an unnecessary proposal and would waste Nevadans’ tax dollars.
“The cost of doing that is about a 70 percent increase, so it will be about a 70 percent increase in the budget and then the buildings themselves, there’s been a proposal to improve those buildings and one of them has hearing rooms and you definitely gut that and make sure it works for hearing rooms, but the other buildings are office buildings, and in total there’s a proposal for close to a hundred million dollars more for tenant improvements and there’s a couple of parking garages that are 30 million dollars,” (R-Reno) Senator Heidi Seevers Gansert.
In addition to expanding legislative buildings in Las Vegas, the legislature is also proposing to renovate the Nevada State Assembly Complex in Carson City for about $100 million dollars.
The Capital Improvements Project has not gotten a vote in the senate. It would need a 2/3rds super majority vote to pass.