Behind the Bar: Welcome to the 82nd session
Behind the Bar is The Nevada Independent’s newsletter devoted to comprehensive and accessible coverage of the 2023 Legislature.
In today’s edition: Happy first day of session. We break down opening day, pomp, circumstance and all. Plus, a look at some changes to standing rules, the looming fight over education funding and a push from the Latino caucus to expand Medicaid to undocumented immigrants.
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Days until:
- Last day for bill introductions: 48
- First house passage deadline: 78
- Sine die: 119
Now the work begins
On his first day as speaker of the Assembly, Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) presided over a chamber with 14 new members — a body so full of fresh faces that the average experience per lawmaker was just 2.6 years.
Across the hallway, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) also lauded the diversity of the state’s Legislature.
For the third session in a row, more than half of all legislators are women. The ethnic, age and religious makeup of the Legislature is “beginning to reflect a lot more of what Nevada looks like,” Cannizzaro said, noting that the minority and majority top leadership positions in the state Senate are held by women for the first time in legislative history.
Cannizzaro and Yeager now lead a Senate and Assembly at odds — at least by party — with the governor’s office for the first time since 2017.
Still, Yeager, elected unanimously and without drama (unlike some congressional speakers we know), cast the legislative session to come as one that ought to be defined by compromise.
It was a message echoed by fellow legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle: Assembly Majority Leader Sandra Jauregui (D-Las Vegas) and Assembly Minority Leader P.K. O’Neill (R-Carson City) in the Assembly, Cannizzaro and Minority Leader Heidi Seevers Gansert (R-Reno) in the Senate. Cannizzaro and Gansert even touted co-sponsoring a bill, SB89, that would tighten parts of the state’s sex trafficking law.
“It's a very strong example of bipartisanship,” Seevers Gansert said. “Partisan politics has its place but the campaign season is over and now it's time for us to govern together as Nevadans.”
Yeager, in his speech, minimized partisanship, calling for fewer “keyboard warriors” and more actual “warriors.”
But so, too, did he tout a litany of Democratic policy wins from 2021 — including the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan for K-12 schools, a revamped version of the state’s antiquated school funding system. Spending through the formula is on track to rise by $2 billion in the next two years — something that has become a keystone of Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s proposed budget.
Yeager also highlighted Democratic priorities for the session: sweeping investments in education, including $250 million more to education than Lombardo proposed to help provide pay increases for teachers, as well as pay raises for state employees, investments in mental health care and resources to address the “looming eviction crisis.”
Cannizzaro’s speech tread similar ground. As she described bipartisan compromise as something that is “not going to be easy” but also “must be done,” she also emphasized the need to focus on increasing educational opportunities, investing in the next generation, ensuring affordable and accessible health care and supporting small businesses.
Amid Monday’s festivities and nonpartisan well wishes — a day steeped in ceremony, with much of the day filled with lawmakers introducing their families on the floor — it was those issues that hung in the background as caucuses and interest groups also sought to draw the lines of policy battles in advance of the meat of the 82nd session.
“These last few years have been difficult for so many Nevadans,” Cannizzaro said. “It is our duty to continue to serve those Nevadans and make sure that we are delivering for them real solutions that make their lives better.”
— Jacob Solis, Tabitha Mueller and Sean Golonka
What we’re reading and writing
Follow the Money: Democratic lawmakers lead as record $13 million raised in 2022 cycle, by Sean Golonka and Jacob solis
Democrats pad the war chests.
Q&A: Treasurer warns of fallout if debt ceiling isn’t raised, previews legislative session, by Tabitha Mueller
Conine on the debt ceiling standoff: “I think it's just absolute insanity.”
DNC approves nominating calendar with Nevada in second spot, by Gabby Birenbaum
If you listen closely, you can hear the world’s smallest New Hampshire-shaped violin.
News Briefs
Latino lawmakers want to expand Medicaid to undocumented Nevadans
The Nevada Latino Legislative Caucus wants to increase access to health care services by expanding Medicaid to Nevadans regardless of citizenship or immigration status.
State Sen. Fabian Doñate (D-Las Vegas) announced the policy goal on Monday, as members of the group — previously called the Hispanic Legislative Caucus — held a news conference in Carson City on the first day of the 120-day legislative session.
“We want to make sure that our families are protected every step of the way,” Doñate said. “Regardless of who you are or where you came from, you deserve to be taken care of as long as you're in this state.”
According to a 2019 Guinn Center report on uninsured populations in Nevada, an estimated 210,000 Nevada residents (about 7 percent of the state population) were “unauthorized immigrants,” or undocumented, in 2017. An estimated 94,500 of them do not have health insurance.
Medicaid, a joint federal and state program, offers low-income individuals health insurance and covers more than 900,000 Nevadans.
According to the National Conference for State Legislators, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Washington and the nation’s capital have expanded their Medicaid programs to provide insurance for all children, regardless of immigration status. But for undocumented adults, options may be limited to emergency services and charity or nonprofit services.
Doñate said the caucus has not approached Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo about their health care proposal. Lombardo did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday afternoon.
“I think the reality is it's easy to get into the political nature of this conversation,” Doñate said. “We believe that if that conversation is upheld, and we do so in good faith, we hope that Gov. Lombardo is able to join us in our effort and other legislative leaders as well.”
At the news conference, where lawmakers were surrounded by family members for the celebratory first day festivities, legislators also outlined priorities on education, housing and language access.
The group also announced its name change, which caucus leaders said is an effort to “provide more accurate representation” of the demographic that comprises nearly a third of the state’s population.
Assemblywoman Elaine Marzola (D-Henderson), who immigrated from Brazil as a child, said the new name includes people like her and any person with roots in Latin America.
“The best way to advance the values of the Silver State is by promoting equality and embracing diversity to provide a more accurate representation of our current members and to further align with the values of our constituents,” Marzola said. “This unit now includes people like me with a deep personal understanding of the challenges faced by our community.”
— Jannelle Calderón
No more remote voting
It was a staple in the 2021 session, as pandemic-era restrictions affected typical legislative proceedings, but will it make a return in 2023? Lawmakers are largely doing away with it this year.
Though newly approved legislative rules remove most of last session’s rules related to “remote-technology systems,” a new rule carves out a way for such systems to be used under “exceptional circumstances” and only if approved by leadership.
Speaker Steve Yeager said Monday afternoon that the body expects to have members present at votes, but the remote voting provision could be used in extreme situations, such as a lawmaker having a death in their family.
The new rules also exclude a pair of emergency provisions from the last session that required members to wear face coverings and monitor their own health amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
— Sean Golonka
Election 2028 watch?
Just because it’s Day 1 of the Legislature doesn’t mean out-of-state politicians are out of sight. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) made an appearance in the Assembly chamber Monday as a special guest of freshman Assemblyman Reuben D’Silva (D-Las Vegas), who highlighted D’Silva’s status as the first Indian American member of the Legislature.
“I call him the seventh federal representative and the fifth congressman for Nevada,” D’Silva said. “And that is a very special guest, a mentor of mine, somebody who will be doing great work with us as we are proceeding with the work of the people's work in this house and that is Congressman Ro Khanna.”
Khanna said last month he was considering a run for U.S. Senate in California, and others have speculated that he may run for higher office in 2028, as he has retained consultants who are veterans of the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries, Politico reported in January.
D’Silva isn’t the only one in the Legislature with a Khanna connection. Assemblywoman Selena Torres’s (D-Las Vegas) discussions with Khanna about El Salvador led Khanna to introduce a congressional resolution to urge President Joe Biden to acknowledge the United States’ role in that country’s 12-year civil war.
— Sean Golonka
Progressive coalition pushes back against Lombardo’s message of “Nevada Way”
A coalition of progressives said Gov. Joe Lombardo’s “Nevada Way” plan expressed during his State of the State address does not fully represent the state and fails to address housing affordability, environmental threats from lithium mining, improved safety for educators and protections for Indigenous land and transgender rights.
Laura Martin, executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) Action, said Lombardo’s plans for the coming biennium work for a “small percentage of people at the top” and not struggling Nevadans.
The PLAN Progressive State of the State address Friday concluded with the speakers harmonizing a song about high rents and housing affordability.
“I was going to get my own place, but the rent is too high,” they sang. “Now I’m sleeping on a couch and you know why – why man – because the rent is too high.”
Martin said Lombardo, who only briefly touched on housing issues in his recent State of the State address, should “level the playing field between tenants and landlords” as rents increase, wages stagnate and evictions continue to swiftly proceed in Nevada.
During the PLAN address, Carlos Padilla, a 29-year-Culinary Union pastry baker at the Treasure Island Casino, said his landlord raised his rent by $400 and in March it will go up another $200, reaching $1,800. When Padilla asked his landlord about it, he said the landlord laughed at him and told him it was not illegal in the state of Nevada to “raise the rent as high as they did.”
“I had to have a conversation with my family,” he said. “We sat at the table … talking about how we were going to budget … how we were going to spend our money for either food on the table or rent.”
Sy Bernabei, executive director of the nonprofit organization Gender Justice, spoke about policy needs for the transgender community, such as hate crime bills, HIV modernization, access to health care while incarcerated and affirming health care.
Eztli Amaya, an environmental justice organizer, spoke against the mining of lithium-ion for electric cars on sacred Indigenous land where ancestral remains lie.
Erica Nunagray from the Nevada State Education Association said leaders should focus on teacher shortages that contribute to inadequacies in learning. She said it’s “time for 20,” a reference to increasing pay for support staff to at least $20 an hour, reducing class sizes to 20 students and raising teacher pay by 20 percent.
Nunagray also spoke about the Respect Educators Act, a proposal this session to “give educators the tools and resources to deal with students with disruptive or violent behavior.”
There was also a call for dignity for inmates held by the Nevada Department of Corrections. Rayshaun, a speaker who spent 14 years behind bars and declined to provide his last name, said someone needs to be held accountable for the conditions of Nevada prisons.
“It was hell on earth,” he said.
— Naoka Foreman
And to get you going into the week, a few tweets that caught our eye:
- So the speaker *can’t* control the weather.
- A new “Nevada Memes” account has popped up. The session may only be four months, but it’ll probably age us each four years.
We’ll see you on Friday.