Nevada lawmakers in the final hours of the 2023 Legislature

RENO, Nev. (KOLO) - The big board in the Nevada Assembly says it all.

No Assembly Bills on the itemized list, just Senate Bills sent over from the other house for assembly members to consider and vote to pass, or not.

“We on the Assembly side, and I will admit I am a little biased naturally towards the assembly,” says PK O’Neill, the Nevada Assembly Minority Leader. “We’ve conducted our business and we are ready to take on the bills that the senate wants to send to us. Unfortunately, we are going to have to do them as rapidly as possible. But we are still going to do them with a study on each bill.”

It’s a time where some lawmakers are holding on by their fingernails.

If their bill does not pass both houses and moves on to the Governor’s desk, it will have to be re-introduced two years from now, if at all.

For freshman Assemblywoman Angie Taylor the day is hectic. But what may be her breakthrough legislation, a school discipline bill, has already been signed by the governor.

“Wooo, I’m very, very excited about that,” says Assemblywoman Taylor who represents District 27 in Northern Nevada. “I mean the hard thing, and we’ve talked about school discipline before, is finding that nuance between making sure our schools are safe, and productive and people can learn. And teachers feel like they really have a chance. But balancing that with, if and when a student crosses the line from a behavior standpoint, how do we support that child?”

The Nevada Assembly and Senate will be in sessions off and on all evening where some here estimate more than three hundred bills are in limbo.

That includes AB 519. Lobbyist Will Adler says it’s a way for rural counties to fund much needed school construction in their districts.

“The back end of AB 519 does have full funding for the tribal school for Owyhee Nevada for Duck Valley,” says Adler. “The other mechanisms in it have a state match account in rural Nevada. 100,000 or less population-wise will be able to raise money through a self-imposed tax; to have an account which in turn the state will match. Whatever they put into it to get a new school.”

Funding for the Owyhee School was dead in the water at the beginning of the session.

And it goes to show there are plenty of twists and turns for bills in the final hours of a Nevada legislature. Lawmakers predict they will sine die by midnight tonight because they must per the state constitution.

They say that doesn’t mean though that a special session won’t be called for the A’s Stadium Bill as well as the movie production bill.

And if all goes as planned some predict the governor could see three times the amount of bills on his desk after tonight.

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