Politicians of both parties have promised to fix the nation’s broken permitting system. But those promises have not been kept, and the status quo prevails: longer timelines, higher costs and a regulatory maze that makes it nearly impossible to build major projects on schedule.

Last week, the House finally cut through the fog by passing the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act. As Jeff Luse reported for Reason, the legislation is the clearest chance in years to overhaul a system that has spun out of control.

Notably, virtually every House Democrat — including Reps. Dina Titus, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford from Nevada — opted for the current regulatory morass.

The proposal addressed problems with the National Environmental Policy Act, which passed in the 1970s to promote transparency, but has grown into an anchor that drags down public and private investment. Mr. Luse notes that even after Congress streamlined the act in 2021, the average environmental impact statement takes 2.4 years to complete. That number speaks for itself and does not reflect the many reviews that stretch far beyond that already unreasonable timeline.

The SPEED Act tackles these failures head on. It would codify recent Supreme Court guidance, expand the projects that do not require exhaustive review and set real expectations for federal agencies that too often slow-walk approvals. Most important, it puts long-overdue limits on litigation. Mr. Luse highlights the absurdity of the current six-year window for filing a lawsuit under the Environmental Policy Act. Between 2013 and 2022, these lawsuits delayed projects an average of 4.2 years.

While opponents insist the bill would silence communities, Mr. Luse notes that NEPA already includes multiple public hearings and comment periods. Also, the vast majority of lawsuits are not filed by members of the people who live near the projects. According to the Breakthrough Institute, 72 percent of NEPA lawsuits over the past decade came from national nonprofits. Only 16 percent were filed by local communities. The SPEED Act does not shut out the public. It reins in well-funded groups that can afford to stall projects indefinitely.

Some Democrats claim the bill panders to fossil fuel companies, while some Republicans fear it will accelerate renewable projects. As Mr. Luse explains, NEPA bottlenecks have held back wind, solar and transmission lines as often as they have slowed oil and gas. That is why the original SPEED Act won support from green energy groups and traditional energy producers.

Permitting reform is overdue, and lawmakers claim to understand that endless red tape hurts economic growth and environmental progress alike. The SPEED Act is the strongest permitting reform proposal in years. The Senate should approve it.

The Silver State was plenty purple in 2025.

Nevada has long had a reputation for its libertarian tilt. Nowadays, partisanship leads many political stories. In top state government and politics stories of the year, some political lines were blurred when politicians bucked their party’s go-to stances to make headlines, while other party stances stayed entrenched.

Here are a handful of the biggest stories out of Nevada government and politics in 2025.

Film tax credit saga returns for parts 2 and 3

A large-scale effort to bring a film studio to Southern Nevada was revived — and died twice — in 2025. Sony Pictures Entertainment and Warner Bros. Discovery, who were previously leading opposing efforts to build multi-acre studio lots with tax breaks, joined forces in February to back one bill in front of the Nevada Legislature. They were joined by developer Howard Hughes Corp. in a lobbying push throughout the four-month session, then once again during a seven-day special legislative session in mid-November.

The renewed legislation drew plenty of praise from union and business leaders and created an unlikely coalition of fiscal conservatives and progressives on the left against it. Proponents said the proposal would help create a new industry for Nevada, creating thousands of construction and entertainment industry-related jobs. Opponents criticized the billion-dollar effect it would have on the state’s general fund as a “Hollywood handout.”

In the end, the opposition won out. It passed the Assembly 22-20 in the last week of the regular session and received the same vote count during the special session — though six members switched their votes.

The state Senate voted on the proposed Summerlin Studios project only during the special session, where it failed because 11 senators voted against it or were absent for the Nov. 19 vote. Several lawmakers called out the intense political pressure to pass the bill, despite their concerns of how the subsidies would have affected state coffers.

Democrats fight to strengthen mail-in voting

The movement to enshrine mail-in voting in Nevada also stretched through both 2025 legislative sessions, as well as a federal Supreme Court case.

Democratic lawmakers sought to establish state laws around voting by mail, including about the placement of ballot boxes between early voting and Election Day and the timeline in which clerks had to count mailed ballots received after polls closed.

Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas, proposed a compromise with Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo through a bill expanding ballot drop box access in the run-up to Election Day and implementing voter ID requirements, but Lombardo vetoed the bill.

Democrats found a way during the special session, however. In the final hour before the session’s end on Nov. 19, Senate Democrats introduced and considered a resolution to propose enshrining mail-in voting in the Nevada Constitution via a voter amendment. The resolution must past the next consecutive session before it can go on the 2028 general election ballot.

This all comes as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs a case that could affect Nevada’s existing law that allows ballots postmarked on Election Day to be counted as late as 5 p.m. four days after Election Day.

Cyberattack on Nevada cripples the state for weeks

Nevada state government was crippled for four weeks in the late summer and fall when a ransomware attack was discovered in state systems in August.

Many state services were moved off-line to sequester the IT threats, leading to 28 days of outages after the Aug. 24 discovery of the ransomware attack. Those included worker’s compensation claims, DMV services, online applications for social services and a background check system.

According to the after-action report, a malicious actor entered the state’s computer system as early as May 14. The threat actor had accessed “multiple critical servers” by the end of August. State officials emphasized that core financial systems and Department of Motor Vehicle data were not breached by the hackers.

The state did not pay a ransom, according to officials. Instead, it worked with external cybersecurity vendors to deal with incident response and recovered about 90 percent of affected data. That costed about $1.5 million for those contracts and overtime pay.

Budget woes leave state in status quo limbo

Financial uncertainty clouded Nevada state government throughout the year as the impact of federal purse-shrinking, uncertainty around the effect of Trump administration tariffs and the reduced tax revenue from a tourism slump persisted throughout 2025.

Nevada lawmakers passing the state’s two-year budget cycle were put in a tight spot when economic forecasts projecting state revenue were downgraded during the legislative session and ultimately passed a state budget that avoided funding multiple new programs.

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.

In regard to your Monday editorial concerning the high cost of electrical energy in Nevada:

The Review-Journal is correct that the high costs in Nevada are due to green energy mandates forcing utilities to provide energy from expensive sources. However, your concluding statement that, “Nevada consumers who are upset at high utility costs should direct their ire to state policy makers” is way off the mark.

In 2020, Nevada voters passed Question 6 amending the state constitution to require utilities to acquire 50 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2030. Nevada consumers who are upset at high utility costs should direct their ire at the majority of Nevada voters who passed Question 6, which drives these high prices.