The 83rd Session of the Nevada Legislature wrapped up late last night as legislators worked to get their bills to the governor's desk.
Confusion and tension on Senate floor ahead of sine die
The "sine die" deadline of this year's Nevada Legislature will be one that will not be forgotten.
Hours before the end if the end of the session, there wasn't much activity on either of the floors.
However, the last couple of hours saw lawmakers moving very quickly to get bills passed through.
Things got especially interesting on the Senate floor.
As the clock ticked towards midnight, the Assembly floor called "sine die" and sent over members of the assembly over to the Senate floor to adjourn the session.
The senate was still in session, for about 20 minutes after midnight.
So, let's rewind the clocks on what went down on the senate floor in the final moments.
As it came down to last minutes of the session, Senate Concurrent Resolution 8, SCR8, was called from the agenda for a vote.
There is no language in NELIS while writing the article to get a look at it, but Senate Republicans claim it was looking to change the Legislative Commission, a group of legislators with supervising authority.
Some of the State Senators claim it would affect them, being the minority party with less equity on the commission and partisan balance.
Senator Robin Titus, (R) Minority Leader said she found out about it moments before it was announced.
"30 minutes literally at 11:30, and clearly they had it planned," she said to press after the session.
This caused for the meeting to stall in the final minutes.
Senator Ira Hansen, (R) District 14, also took issue with this and not being able to have a discussion during the session, so he joined in the protest.
"Instead at the very last, literally the last six minutes of the session we're trying to force something through rush it through the assembly," he said.
Each minute that was spent on this was taken away from other pending legislation.
"We could have gotten a lot more bills passed there's things that didn't get sent on both sides because fortunately my caucus said no its not right," Titus said.
Some of those key pieces included the film tax credits, and Governor Joe Lombardo's crime and health care bill.
What then caused the meeting to go past midnight was after a couple of votes were had on SCR8, they then moved to SCR9 which was correlated with the previous resolution.,
More conversation was had on the legislation, and tensions grew between Hansen and Senator Nicole Cannizzaro, (D) Clark County.
Senate floor President and Lieutenant Governor, Stavros Anthony then tried to call the adjournment, and then there was some confusion on whether they had to finish the motion before sine die.
Eventually the motion was finished and the 83rd Nevada Legislative Session adjourned at 12:35 a.m.
Governor's housing bill the only one of his to pass officially
Going into the final day of the Legislature, each of the Governor's priority bills were in different stages.
During each session, the Governor is allotted five priority bills.
His Nevada Housing Access and Attainability Act was one the only one to move through.
The bill is creating a Nevada Attainable Housing Account to create more housing, while also adding in a fourth tier for affordable housing.
"We’ve made significant progress in our two most critical endeavors this session: combatting the rising cost of housing and improving outcomes in our K-12 education system," the Governor sent out partially in statement.
While that was the only bill to pass, there were components of some of his legislation to make into other bills.
The bipartisan bill between him and Cannizzaro was a favorable one.
"I thought we moved the needle especially on things like education," said Assem. Reuben D'Silva, (D) Clark County. "I serve as Vice Chair on the Assembly Education committee, we got some important legislation through, SB460 I think was a key piece that were able to get at the last minute."
Parts of his Nevada Accountability in Education Act were added to Cannizzaro's that's also looking to hold schools to a specific standard.
Some lawmakers were not happy with how Lombardo's health care bill was handled.
"I will say I was very disappointed to see the Governor's health care bill die tonight," said Assem. Greg Hafen II., (R) Minority Leader after the deadline passed. "I thought it was slightly disrespectable for the senate to stick in a poison pill amendment literally in the 11th hour this night. Because that had some really good policies that the state needed."
The amendment centered around limits on free standing emergency rooms.
In the Governor's press conference on the bill at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he mentioned wanting to create the Nevada Health Authority.
That passed in a separate bill.
Lombardo's tough on crime bill actually passed out of both floors, but wasn't concurred in the senate in time.
The bill was heavily changed and amended, which isn't surprising given all that it was looking to undo a lot of criminal justice reform passed by democratic lawmakers.
Some think it was a good thing it didn't make it to law.
"That's the problem when you run a piece of legislation and you don't work with anybody," said John Piro, Clark County Public Defender's Office. "Kind of like back in 2019 everyone worked together to pass good legislation and that's actually been working but crime has been going down. This was a bad, not thought out piece of legislation and frankly its good that it did fail."
Lombardo's last bill, that was barely mentioned or talked about that centered around economic development didn't move past its first hearing.
Some bills barely squeezed the deadline, while some were lost in the shuffle
"Some good ,some bad," Hafen II. said. "We did a lot of good for the state we passed a balanced budget we were able to give teacher pay raises we gave our state employees pay raises this session."
All five budget bills were passed, so the Legislature was not forced to go into a special session.
The only way they would is if the Governor decided to call one.
There are many bills awaiting his decision.
One includes AB381, also known as Reba's Law. The bill is looking to strengthen punishments for animal cruelty and is awaiting a signature from the Governor.
Another is AB375, the legislation that would allow cities or counties in Nevada to adopt an ordinance if they wanted restaurants to sell alcohol to-go and make the Picon Punch the state's official drink is on Lombardo's desk.
One bill that did not make it passed sine die was the film tax credits bill, AB238.
"Personally, I was very publicly in support of the film tax credit legislation this was a missed opportunity for us," D'Silva said. "I don't know if we're going to get another chance, I'm hoping that we do. I'm cautiously optimistic but again I'm very disappointed we didn't get to advance the legislation."
That bill was backed by Sony Pictures, Warner Bros and Howard Hughes to bring two massive movies studios to southern Nevada.
Lawmakers said there were a lot of conversations behind the scenes about it.
It narrowly passed out of the Assembly last week, and never got a vote on the Senate floor.
Another bill that's on the way to the Governor is Speaker Steve Yeager's legislation to allow nonpartisans to vote in primary elections.
Vetoes already underway from Lombardo
As of Tuesday night, Governor Lombardo has vetoed 15 bills.
After the 2023 session, he vetoed a record 75 bills.
Having a democratic majority and a Republican Governor can create a lot disagreements.
One bill that may jump out to folks is SB89. It's legislation that would prevent people convicted of a hate crime from owning a gun.
It was favored by democrats, but was voted 'nay' by Senate and Assembly Republicans.
SB102, was also vetoed, the second so far surrounding elections. It was looking for harsher punishments for false documents and signatures to be guilty of a felony.
This vote in both the Senate and Assembly followed on party lines.
You may remember the Governor also vetoed Speaker Yeager's bill last month that was trying to expand access to the ballot box.
An interesting development is SB141. It would've required that a Sheriff, Chief of Police or Town Marshal would be responsible for creating a policy for transgender inmates.
All Senate Republicans voted no on it, but then it passed unanimously, however, the Governor still vetoed the bill.
