LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — If you’ve ever wanted to make a suggestion for a new law, now just might be your chance.
The Southern Nevada Forum held its initial meeting on Monday, with the goal of coming up with a dozen new ideas to fix problems faced by residents of the Las Vegas Valley.
Steve Sebelius outlines some of the top issues and potential solutions:
Southern Nevada Forum plans tomorrow’s laws today
The 13-year-old organization — created by the Vegas Chamber, the City of Las Vegas, Brookings Mountain West and former Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick in 2013 — brings together lawmakers and community leaders to brainstorm ideas.
The group has racked up some successes over the years, too. A website dashboard that shows student performance data, funds for medical school residencies, the authority to create inland ports and an extension of fuel tax revenue indexing were all ideas that came out of the forum, current Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager said Monday.
Four committees — covering education, transportation, economic development and health care — meet regularly for a few months, boiling down ideas to three concrete suggestions each.
Those suggestions are later turned into legislation in Carson City.
The panels are led by a bipartisan group of lawmakers who have the ability to introduce legislation, said Yeager, who himself won’t be returning to Carson City, having decided not to seek a sixth and final term in office.
The meetings are open to anyone, although the schedule of times, dates and locations wasn’t available Monday. You can express your interest in being on a committee by filling out a form at this link.
For the 2026 session of the forum, the committees and their leaders are:
On Monday, people at the transportation committee meeting tossed out ideas such as funding for transit projects, including light rail, fees for electric vehicles that use the roads but don’t pay the state’s gasoline tax, cracking down on unregistered cars and people who don’t carry car insurance, and greater protections for pedestrians.
On the economic development committee, suggestions included extending the life of tax abatements to give new businesses time to grow, making more land available for commercial use, not just housing, putting non-profit funding into the regular budget, rather than just awarding grants at the end of the process and making it easier to get permits and licenses regardless of where in the valley you open your business.
Before the groups met, however, they heard from UNLV political science professor David Damore, the executive director of Brookings Mountain West, who warned them that Nevada faces some serious headwinds.
Damore said revenue doesn’t keep up with the state’s brisk growth, leaving Nevada behind the curve.
“We already have a revenue structure unable to keep pace with growth; we need to address some revenue issues here,” he said. “And remember, the people coming here now, they’re not coming to build our economy, they’re coming to avoid paying taxes in their home state, while putting demands on our services and on our healthcare.”
Damore traced some of the problem to a limitation on government growth devised at the end of the 1970s, which artificially constrains budget increases and leaves money on the table.
“We put this in place in 1979, using 1974 as a baseline — the idea being that the general fund would grow to keep pace at 1974 levels, adjusting for inflation and population growth,” he said. “Well, guess what? We don’t have a tax structure that can even generate that much revenue. For this biennium, we’re about $900 million below that.”
Damore said tax exemptions cost state coffers plenty of income, and the entire revenue system needs a serious look.
“$9 billion in tax exemptions that we have in this state. So, a state that goes through the couch cushions to fund mental health, well, maybe we want to revisit some of this stuff here,” Damore said. “Obviously, no one wants to raise taxes; I get that. But we need to have a serious discussion about revenue.”
If you have a question, concern or story idea about politics and government in Nevada, reach out to Steve Sebelius and “Ask Steve.“
A recent Review-Journal letter to the editor mischaracterized Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, also known as the Clark County Lands bill. As the former executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, I wholeheartedly support this legislation, so I wanted to set the record straight.
Sen. Cortez Masto has been working on this bill for years in partnership with state and local governments, conservation groups like the NCL and local area tribes. It’s true that the Clark County lands bill would open 25,000 acres to help Las Vegas grow responsibly, while setting aside 2 million acres for conservation. It would also help create more affordable housing throughout the valley while ensuring our treasured public spaces can be preserved for generations to come.
What is not correct is that the money from these land sales would go to the federal government’s coffers. In fact, the opposite is true.
The 1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act is a landmark bill that identified specific public land for future sale and created a special account ensuring all land sale revenues would come back to Nevada. In accordance with that law 5 percent of revenue from land transfers goes to the state of Nevada for general education purposes, 10 percent goes to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for needed water infrastructure and 85 percent supports conservation and environmental mitigation projects in Southern Nevada. This legislation has provided billions to Clark County and will continue to benefit generations of Southern Nevadans. Sen. Cortez Masto’s lands bill builds upon the act’s success.
So here’s the good news: All of the money generated from land made available for sale under Sen. Cortez Masto’s bill would be sent to the special account created by the 1998 law. Rather than going to an unaccountable federal government, the proceeds would continue to help kids in Vegas get a better education, bolster outdoor recreation and modernize Southern Nevada’s infrastructure.
I know how important it is that money generated from the sale of public land in Nevada stay in the hands of Nevadans, and so does the senator. That’s why she opposed a Republican effort last year to sell off 200,000 acres of land in Clark County and other areas of the country that would have sent those dollars directly to Washington.
Public land management in Nevada should benefit Nevadans. We should protect sacred cultural sites and beloved recreation spaces, responsibly transfer land for affordable housing when needed and ensure our state has the resources it needs to grow sustainably. I will continue working with Sen. Cortez Masto to advocate for legislation, such as the Clark County lands bill, that puts the needs of Nevadans first.
Paul Selberg writes from Las Vegas.
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Las Vegas High’s baseball team claimed a 3-2 home win over Coronado on Friday.
Las Vegas (9-13-1) next hosts Rancho at 10 a.m. Saturday. Coronado (13-14) hosts Chaparral at 3:30 p.m. Monday.
Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Nevada’s jobless rate is holding steady, but the state is still adding jobs.
A new report from DETR shows February’s unemployment rate unchanged at 5.3 percent, with the labor force growing by nearly 3,800 people.
MORE ON FOX5: Nevada unemployment rate rises to 5.3% in January
Nevada now has about 1.6 million nonfarm jobs, up 2.2 percent over the past year and 1,500 more jobs than in January.
“This month’s report shows a strengthening labor market,” said David Schmidt, Chief Economist. ”Compared to the report for January, the pace of job gains in the past year increased from 1.9% to 2.2%, building on what was already the fastest pace of job growth in the country. While the unemployment rate remained stable, the labor force participation rate rose to 63.7%, 1.7 percentage points higher than the national level.”
In Las Vegas, employment ticked up by 1,100 jobs in February, about 0.1 percent, and is up more than 25,000 jobs compared to last year.
Reno added 1,000 jobs on the month, while Carson City shed about 200 but is still slightly above where it was a year ago.
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