How lawmakers may avoid program cuts even though revenue projections are down
In today’s edition:
- Can lawmakers avoid cuts by being frugal?
- Pace of bill signings lags behind previous sessions
- Rent control bill advances
From the Capital Bureau Chief:
Friday is the deadline for bills to pass out of their second committee — meaning we can expect marathon bill hearings, high tempers and lots of questions about what the state should fund between now and sine die.
Though things are a bit tense, not as many measures are expected to meet their end as at the first committee passage deadline when more than 280 bills died. Only 38 bills died in 2023 at the upcoming juncture, 20 in 2021 and 40 in 2019.
One event I’d like to plug is The Nevada Independent’s conversation with legislative leaders at the National Automobile Museum in Reno this evening at 6:30 p.m.
In-person tickets are sold out, but click here to buy access to the livestream.
As always, please send us your questions, thoughts and suggestions. You can reach me at [email protected].
How much money for legislation after revenue downturn?
It’s the most important question of the next three weeks — how much money do we actually have to work with now that tax revenue is projected to be $191 million below earlier projections?
And after the legislative money committees approved the final operating budgets on Friday, we have a better sense of the answer.
The committees have cut more than $450 million from Gov. Joe Lombardo’s proposed, $12.4 billion, two-year budget, largely by not accepting requests for new positions and programs, according to a Nevada Independent analysis of budget closings conducted over the past month.
This is subject to change — operating budgets can still be reopened.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean hundreds of millions of dollars in more money for the upcoming budget cycle — some expenditures removed from the budget are still being proposed, but as one-time appropriations through other bills.
Additionally, the state is going to have to eat unexpected budget overruns in the current fiscal year, such as an excess of overtime payouts in the Department of Corrections.
Still, that will likely provide some relief to legislators who can avoid (for now) cutting programs.
Assm. Daniele Monroe-Moreno (D-North Las Vegas), the chair of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, said the financial situation is still likely the worst that she has seen during her five legislative sessions.
“My goal as a fiscal leader in this building is to try to close down the session without cutting programs,” she said. “If we can do that and maintain what we currently have, that is a win for us.”
Sen. Marilyn Dondero Loop (D-Las Vegas), the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, declined to comment on the overall financial situation, beyond that legislators still have significant work to do.
The list of things policymakers would love to fund if they find the money is long. Among the most expensive are Lombardo’s priority bills, but those are set to be funded through a different pool of money because they are one-shot appropriations, so they will be bankrolled by money carried over from the current budget cycle.
A large driver of the cuts was Nevada Medicaid, whose latest budget iteration comes out nearly $130 million lower than in Lombardo’s recommended budget. One contributing factor: The state expects to spend $38 million less in general funds across the two-year budget cycle because federal immigration policies are expected to hamper enrollment numbers (covered more in depth here).
Additionally, the committees expect to spend $41 million less on Medicaid managed care payments (where the state pays an insurer a fixed dollar amount per member, per month to cover a defined set of health care services) in fiscal year 2026 because of a surplus in the ongoing fiscal year.
The committees also approved reducing K-12 funding in Lombardo’s recommended budget by more than $120 million. This included rejecting the $38 million for charter school teacher raises (Democrats say the raises remain on the table, but the issue has emerged as a political lightning rod) and $17 million in charter school transportation (which is coming via separate legislation).
There was an additional $52 million in savings after making technical changes and fixing errors.
— Eric Neugeboren
What we’re reading and writing
Top Dem backs away from universal pre-K, but seeks stricter rules on charters, CFOs by Rocio Hernandez
Plus: No more ban on teacher strikes?
Charter schools poised to again divide Nevada lawmakers in session’s final weeks by Rocio Hernandez and Eric Neugeboren
State Budget: Episode II — Attack of the Charter Schools
Paying for school construction in rural Nevada is tough. A Nevada lawmaker might have a solution by Rocio Hernandez
Move? (we kid, we kid)
Why are signed bills lagging compared with past sessions?
So far in this year's legislative session, Gov. Joe Lombardo has only signed four bills into law.
That seemed particularly low, so we looked into how many other bills had been signed into law at this point in the session (just under three weeks to go) — and it turns out, it is.
- The four signed bills represent the lowest number a Nevada governor has signed into law since at least the 2011 session, the earliest year with comprehensive bill tracking data on Legiscan, which compiles activity across state legislatures.
- Lawmakers have only sent four bills to the governor’s desk for a signature.
- So far, Lombardo has signed a bill to fund the operations of the legislative session (standard practice at the start of the 120-day sessions), another to limit certain restrictions on cage-free eggs amid rising egg costs, a third that establishes Jan. 27 as Holocaust Remembrance Day in Nevada and a fourth to backfill a shortfall in the secretary of state’s office.
- A Lombardo spokesperson declined to comment.
- Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) said he thinks the phenomenon is tied to the state’s precarious budget situation.
- “Until we close the budgets … I think a lot of the other things going on have been secondary,” Yeager said in an interview Wednesday. “The bills are moving through the process. You’ll see that start to speed up. But the budget’s just taken so much bandwidth.”
- Yeager said hundreds of bills are in finance committees because they either have appropriations or potential fiscal impact — a change from past sessions where bills with a possible financial impact skipped those committees.
- “I think we're just having to really put a fine-tooth comb on all those bills and not set us up for even further financial disaster,” Yeager said.
- In his first session as governor, Lombardo had approved six bills by this point in the session — the second lowest total tracked by The Nevada Independent — including one signed in early April to provide bonuses to most state workers.
- Since 2011, the session with the most bills passed at this point was in 2015, when Republicans had rare control of both the Legislature and governor’s mansion.
— Eric Neugeboren and Tabitha Mueller
Bill(s) spotlight: Rent caps and rent transparency
Two Democrat-sponsored bills on rent — including one on rent control, a policy much criticized in a major ad campaign by Realtors — passed out of the Senate Committee on Commerce and Labor Monday with few changes.
Here’s a closer look at the bills:
- Assm. Sandra Jauregui’s (D-Las Vegas) AB280 would require landlords to break down the rationale for fees and cap annual rent increases for senior citizens at no more than 5 percent for an approximately year-long pilot program.
- It passed out of the Assembly in late April along party lines (27-15).
- All three Republicans on the Senate committee voted no, voicing concerns with the rental cap portion.
- Jauregui said in a March hearing that her bill could have profound benefits for retirees, as a “single unexpected rent spike could mean a difference between staying in a home or being evicted.”
- AB121, sponsored by Assm. Venicia Considine (D-Las Vegas), would require landlords to list rent as a singular figure in the rental agreement — including mandatory fees — and would ban them from charging tenants an amount exceeding that figure. An amendment would exempt certain rentals from listing a “fixed” amount for utility services, which often vary by month.
- It also passed out of the Assembly in late April on party lines (27-15), but Considine said she is more confident this time around, especially given that it passed out of the Senate committee unanimously.
- “We’ve spent a good deal of time working with everyone to try to find narrow ways to bring more people on board,” she said.
- It also passed out of the Assembly in late April on party lines (27-15), but Considine said she is more confident this time around, especially given that it passed out of the Senate committee unanimously.
Previous iterations of both measures were vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo in 2023, who called the rent cap bill “needlessly heavy-handed.”
— Isabella Aldrete
Keeping Tabs
🗳️ New ad for stricter mail ballot return requirements — RightCount Action, a recently formed GOP-aligned group seeking to restore trust in elections, is out with a new 30-second ad touting Gov. Joe Lombardo’s proposal to require mail ballots to be received by Election Day in order to be counted. Current law requires ballots be postmarked by Election Day to be counted, but they may be received as late as four days later.
- Context: Lombardo does not have his own elections bill this session, and a proposal from Sen. Lisa Krasner (R-Reno) that would have changed the deadline (SB103) never received a hearing.
💸 Ford to Trump: Don’t tax tips — Attorney General Aaron Ford sent a letter to President Donald Trump on Monday urging him to uphold his campaign promise to no longer tax tipped wages, which he said “resonated with hardworking Nevadans because, here, tips are wages.” It wasn’t all buttering up, though, with Ford saying that Nevada’s economy has “plummet[ed] under the weight of your administration’s tariffs,” and that “If Republicans in Congress are determined to jam through a tax bill that gives more handouts to billionaires, the very least they can do is include relief for the people who make our country great.”
- Context: Click here for details on the “No tax on tips” element of the proposal.
— Eric Neugeboren
Looking Ahead
- Wednesday, May 14, 1 p.m.: Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro’s (D-Las Vegas) education bill, SB460, will receive its first hearing in the Senate Committee on Education.
- Thursday, May 15, 1 p.m.: Gov. Joe Lombardo’s economic development bill, SB461, is scheduled for its first hearing in the Senate Committee on Revenue and Economic Development.
Days until:
- Second committee passage deadline: 4
- Finish budget differences: 5
- Second house passage deadline: 11
- Sine die: 21
And to get you going into the week, a few social media posts that caught our eye:
- X: The egg puns just won’t stop.
- Instagram: Is this a sign of what’s to come?
- X: Grandkids soft launch gubernatorial bid.
We’ll see you Thursday.