The end is near. Don’t worry, it’s not the apocalypse. It’s just the Nevada Legislature.

Legislators are burning the midnight oil pushing through hundreds of bills. Last week marked the major second committee passage deadline, and there is one more major deadline between now and the final day of session on June 2.

Bills without exemptions must pass out of the second house by Friday, May 23, to get the governor’s consideration.

That means there are roughly two weeks for committees to consider some of the most talked-about legislation of the session. Lombardo’s remaining four priority pieces of legislation still need to have their first hearings. At least one of the bills is scheduled to go in front of the Assembly Ways and Means committee this week. Assembly Bill 584, his education package, will be heard Tuesday morning.

But beware: a deadline failure does not mean a piece of legislation is doomed. Policies can be revived or amended into existing bills, prolonging their discussions until sine die, when this session ends.

Here’s what’s been going on in Nevada’s capital.

Recapping the recent deadline

Last week was eventful for the biennial Legislature. It pushed bills through the second committee passage deadline, and advanced some major bills that had been exempt from the deadline.

First, the bid to stop Nevada’s clocks from changing twice a year failed. AB 81, which would have exempted Nevada from daylight saving time, didn’t make it out of the second committee passage.

An amended version of the governor’s AB 540, called the Nevada Housing Access and Attainability Act, passed out of the Assembly Committee on Commerce and Labor on Friday – the first of the governor’s priority bills to make through committee.

It was amended to decrease the amount put into the proposed Nevada Attainable Housing Fund from $200 million to $150 million, and to remove a portion that would have allowed attainable housing projects to be exempt from prevailing wage requirements.

In other news from deadline day, an amended version of the SB 179, which would allow the Nevada Equal Rights Commission to investigate claims of antisemitism in housing, public accommodations and employment, passed out of committee.

During bill’s discussion May 13, Jewish advocacy groups called for the bill to be amended to use the widely recognized definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Other dead bills

In addition to the death of the daylight saving time bill, 30 other measures failed to advance the Friday deadline.

Those bills include:

• AB 156 would have increased the salary of Clark County School District trustees to the base salary of a county commissioner.
• AB 291 would have automatically sealed criminal records for defendants who had their charges dismissed or who were acquitted.
• SB 143 would have required a study on artificial turf and synthetic grass during the 2025-2026 interim.
• SB 324 would have prohibited the sale of most water bottles in communities abutting Lake Tahoe.

It’s far less than the 281 measures that failed the first committee passage deadline on April 11. But there are still 414 bills and resolutions as of Monday that are exempt from all deadlines, most often because they contain an appropriation or would have a fiscal or revenue impact to the state.

Monday updates

That brings us to Monday. Agendas have grown longer for money committees where lawmakers are hearing bills with significant fiscal impact to the state, some for the first time. The Senate approved SB 89, a bill preventing someone convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime from purchasing or owning firearms for up to 10 years after the conviction. The bill passed 12-8 and still must be considered by the Assembly.

The Democrats’ answer to education policy — SB 460 sponsored by state Sen. Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro – was heard for the first time Monday afternoon.

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com and Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ and @jess_hillyeah on X.

The problems with Nevada’s public schools won’t be fixed by teachers spending less time in the classroom. Yet that could be a consequence of a proposal pending in Carson City.

The Senate Government Affairs Committee recently heard Senate Bill 161 and moved it to the floor. The bill would allow teachers unions to petition a court for the ability to strike. It’s now illegal for Nevada public employees to strike.

Under the legislation, a union could justify a strike based on grievances involving class size, the number of teachers in the district or a policy related to the emotional or mental health of teachers. A court could sanction a strike upon a finding that it would “be equally or less detrimental” to students “than the continuance of the alleged policy or condition.”

Further, the bill would remove penalties on teachers who engaged in an illegal strike. Only the union could be punished. And it would redefine the legal definition of “strike” to exclude teachers coordinating sick-outs or walking out of individual schools.

It isn’t hard to figure out who this bill would benefit — and it’s not students.

Fewer than two years ago, the Clark County Education Association attempted to use tactics such as these to pressure the Clark County School District during contentious contract negotiations. The district went to court to prevent the union from striking. A judge ruled against the district, finding there wasn’t enough evidence that the union would initiate a work stoppage. Then several schools couldn’t open because of rolling sick-outs.

“The court finds that a strike has occurred,” District Judge Crystal Eller said in September 2023. She imposed a preliminary injunction, and both school and contract negotiations continued. The district and union eventually agreed to a lucrative pay package for teachers.

But the union wasn’t satisfied. It collected signatures for a ballot measure that would allow teachers to strike. In Nevada, initiatives go to the Legislature before the voters. The union wants to use the threat of that initiative as leverage to pass a bill such as SB161, which is slightly less destructive. In Nevada, enabled by a compliant state Supreme Court, initiative sponsors can withdraw their initiatives.

But this legalized blackmail works only if your opponents believe the initiative will pass. That’s unlikely in this case. There are good reasons to ban public employees from striking. Strikes by public employees are strikes against the public and, in some cases, threaten public safety. Public employees shouldn’t be able to extort concessions from the taxpayers who support them. Nevada’s binding arbitration process is already slanted in favor of the union.

Allowing teachers to strike is bad policy. Democrats should be working to advance the interests of students, not union officials.

The Hoover Dam is a lifeline to rural communities throughout the American Southwest. More than 1 million people in Nevada, Arizona and California rely on the clean energy that the dam produces. Public power utilities — that are not-for-profit community-owned — such as our organizations depend on the Hoover Dam to bring affordable and reliable energy to our rural Nevada communities.

Unfortunately, widespread drought on the Colorado River has had a dramatic impact on the dam’s ability to produce electricity. Energy generation by the dam has been reduced by 40 percent since pre-drought levels. When there is a reduction in the supply of hydropower generated from the dam, small rural public power utilities such as ours are forced to go to the market to purchase other energy sources, which are typically more expensive and less reliable. This has serious implications for rural Nevada ratepayers as energy prices are driven up and grid reliability is threatened.

While these challenges are significant, there are common-sense solutions that can help mitigate them. Unfortunately, the very resources that could help alleviate these challenges have been tied up in federal bureaucratic red tape.

In 2000, the federal government began collecting fees from hydropower users, putting the money into an account for dam employees’ retirement benefits. But when those benefits found other funding sources, the money was left unused. We are not talking about pocket change — right now there’s $50 million in funds for operations, maintenance and improvement projects to strengthen the Hoover Dam. These funds should be invested to strengthen the dam to safeguard Nevada’s hydropower. Instead, the money is just sitting in some account going unused because the Bureau of Reclamation can’t legally access it.

Fortunately, there is a solution, and we are grateful to Nevada’s congressional delegation for coming together to push for legislation to solve this. The Help Hoover Dam Act was introduced by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Rep. Susie Lee and co-sponsored by Reps. Mark Amodei, Dina Titus, Steven Horsford and Sen. Jacky Rosen. If passed, this will allow the Bureau of Reclamation to invest that $50 million back into improving the dam.

These improvements modernize the dam so it can better withstand drought conditions and disasters, safeguarding the production of hydroelectric power, all while saving our taxpayer dollars.

Without access to affordable hydropower, utilities would have to purchase more power from the open market, which can spike to unaffordable costs on peak days. Rural Nevada communities simply can’t afford those price hikes.

The act puts funding that has already been allocated by the federal government to work, keeping hard-earned money in the pockets of rural communities, and secures our energy supply to prevent catastrophic failure in the event of a storm or natural disaster.

We urge Congress to join Nevada’s federal delegation and pass the Help Hoover Dam Act to invest in the future of the Hoover Dam’s hydropower that millions of rural Americans rely on, many of whom are our fellow Nevadans.

Lisa Levine is the executive director of the Nevada Rural Electric Association. This essay was also signed by Joe Stubitz, utilities director in Boulder City; Dane Bradfield, general manager of Lincoln County Power District No. 1; MeLisa Garcia, general manager and CEO of Overton Power District No. 5; and Robby Hamlin, CEO of the Valley Electric Association.