Nearly 300 pieces of legislation are dead after the first major deadline of Nevada’s 83rd Legislative Session. Nevada’s state lawmakers meet for four months every two years to work out a two-year budget. They sift through hundreds of bills. Some of those bills get heard, others don’t even get lip service.
Then some bills face deadlines. One deadline was last week. Another is five weeks from now. Surviving the deadline means they have a chance for final approval. Not surviving means they are dead.
Bills that make it out of the Nevada Legislature are sent to Gov. Joe Lombardo to sign into law. In 2023, Lombardo set a record by vetoing 75 bills.
This is all happening in Carson City in a year when state revenues are much lower than two years ago — then again, the state was flush with roughly $2 billion more in federal COVID relief money.
So last Friday’s first bill deadline was a big one.
That includes Assembly Joint Resolution 5, one of the measures KNPR’s Politics Reporter Paul Boger was keeping an eye on.
“That was a resolution brought up in 2023 to create a lottery here in the state,” said Boger, “but it never received a hearing this session, so it has quietly died.”
Lawmakers are also deeply concerned about the state’s future budget situation.
Earlier this year, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted on a spending resolution that will allow Congress to eye cuts to Medicaid during budget negotiations later this year. Medicaid provides health coverage to about one-in-four Nevadans. When coupled with a slowing economy, lawmakers are concerned that declining revenue could create a worst-case scenario for the state budget.
Lucia Starbuck, who covers politics for KUNR in Reno, said those cuts to Medicaid could wreak havoc across the state.
“I've talked to rural hospitals and clinics, and they say, ‘yeah, people will still get care,” she explained, “but you have nine out of 13 rural critical access hospitals in Nevada operating in the red, so any reduction to revenue is going to have serious consequences.”
Guest: Lucia Starbuck, politics reporter, KUNR Public Radio
