Connect with us

Nevada

Bill to lower egg prices and alleviate demand in Nevada heads to Gov. Lombardo

Published

on

Bill to lower egg prices and alleviate demand in Nevada heads to Gov. Lombardo


LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — The state Senate Wednesday unanimously passed a bill aimed at lowering the price of eggs in Nevada, moving the bill through the legislative process with remarkable speed.

The bill is now on its way to Gov. Joe Lombardo for a signature.

Assembly Bill 171 would allow state officials temporarily to suspend a Nevada law passed in 2021 that requires all eggs sold in the state to come from hens not kept in cages.

The bill is designed to increase egg supply and lower prices by allowing stores to stock conventional eggs, locally grown eggs and even Grade B eggs. Not only have prices risen, but eggs have become more scarce. Some stores even limit the number of eggs people can buy.

Advertisement

Watch Lawmakers consider suspending Nevada’s cage-free egg law to meet the demand

Lawmakers consider suspending Nevada’s cage-free egg law to meet the demand

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of eggs rose 15.2% between December and January.

Advertisement

In 2021, state lawmakers sought to address animal cruelty by passing the cage-free law. The measure passed on a party-line vote in the Assembly but earned a bipartisan majority in the state Senate.

But after the price of eggs became a campaign issue in the 2024 presidential race, Nevada lawmakers began looking for ways to reduce prices and give relief to consumers.

Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager and Assemblyman Howard Watts, both D-Clark County, introduced AB 171 to allow for the 2021 law to be temporarily suspended for periods of 120 days during times of crisis. Only two suspensions would be allowed per calendar year.

Watts was chairman of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee in 2021 and oversaw the passage of the original cage-free egg bill.

The bill sailed through the Assembly Natural Resources committee and passed the floor quickly as lawmakers moved to suspend the rules and declare the bill an emergency measure. A similar process took place on Tuesday, with quick Senate committee approval and a truncated process on the floor today.

Advertisement

Watch Nevada Assembly fast-tracks bill aimed at lowering egg prices to State Senate

Nevada Assembly fast-tracks bill aimed at lowering egg prices to State Senate

The votes were unanimous, with both Republicans and Democrats approving the bill.

Advertisement

But politics weren’t totally absent from the discussion. A news release issued shortly after the Senate floor vote declared “legislative Democrats” had passed the measure and criticizing the Trump administration for the economy. (The release made no mention of Republican support for the bill.)

Then the Nevada State Democratic Party issued a news release of its own, calling on Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo to sign the measure into law, something it appears he is prepared to do in any circumstance.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Dr. Robin Titus, R-Lyon County, the Republican minority leader, said after the vote that the Legislature spends too much time passing laws to correct the unintended consequences of other laws.

“This body, this body, has too many times forced to return to legislation to cure problems that we caused by legislation,” Titus said. “Time and time again, we have seen these laws passed with good intentions only again to find that there’s second order effects [that] create new problems.”

Titus was in the Assembly in 2021 and voted no on the original cage-free egg bill.

Advertisement

But Democrats, including Watts, have said higher egg prices are caused by the avian flu, which has caused millions of egg-laying birds to be euthanized. That, and supply chain problems, are more to blame for high prices and shortages than the cage-free requirements in state law, they say.

That’s what state Sen. Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro cited in a response to Titus’s comments Wednesday.

“And I don’t think that because we sometimes have to be adaptive to that, or to address concerns that may not have existed the day before, the year before, the two years before or four years before, means that this body is not doing its job,” Cannizzaro said.

The bill will go into effect immediately after it’s signed by Lombardo.

Do you have questions about the Legislature, politics, elections or laws in Nevada? Email us using the Ask Steve link on our website.

Advertisement

Local News

Ask Steve: Your questions about politics, elections and government in Nevada





Source link

Nevada

Southern Nevada sees string of shootings, one person killed in 24-hour span

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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.






Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Nevada

Caltech readies to build world’s most sensitive radio telescope in Nevada

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

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.”

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

Copyright 2026 KVVU. All rights reserved.



Source link

Continue Reading

Nevada

Conservation groups oppose potential sale of federal lands highlighted in land mapping tool

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

“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.

Advertisement

“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.

Advertisement

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.



Source link

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending