The contentious fight between Nevada casinos and the politically powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226 over legally mandated daily room cleaning is coming back to Carson City from an unexpected source — a freshman Republican state senator.

Sen. Lori Rogich (R-Las Vegas) told The Nevada Independent Tuesday that she will introduce a measure to mandate daily room cleaning in hotels and casinos with the goal of addressing the illicit cannabis market. It’s illegal to consume cannabis outside of a private residence or a cannabis consumption lounge; the legal industry has blamed its flagging revenue numbers on lack of enforcement of a sizable unregulated market.

“When you have folks in there, this is not occurring. There's a set of eyes; we see what's happening,” Rogich said, adding that reinstating the mandate would also alleviate burdens on room cleaners facing significant messes after not cleaning for a few days in a row.

In 2023, the Culinary Union fiercely opposed the passage of SB441, a bipartisan measure supported by the resort industry that ended daily room cleaning mandates initially implemented during the pandemic. 

During months of negotiations with more than 50 Strip and downtown resort operators that finally wrapped up in early 2024, the union reinstated daily room cleaning language into the five-year collective bargaining agreements that expire in 2028.

Rogich, a regulatory compliance attorney focused on the cannabis industry, said she saw the bill as a way to address the illegal and unregulated sale of cannabis, which can lead to buyers consuming contaminated batches of the drug, can reduce tax revenue flowing to the government and can harm the legal industry. 

Rogich is still working through the language for the bill but said she hopes to include a reporting mechanism for room cleaners who find unauthorized cannabis. She said she hasn’t spoken with Senate Democrats about the measure because it’s still being written.

Representatives for the Senate Democrats, who hold a majority in the upper house, did not immediately respond to a question about whether the Senate would give the measure a hearing.

If passed, the measure would have significant implications for the resort industry, which Rogich said is opposed. She said she’s had conversations with leaders of the Culinary, who — in an unusual move for the union usually aligned with Democrats — endorsed her 2024 election bid against then-incumbent Sen. Dallas Harris (D-Las Vegas). 

Despite the resort industry’s opposition, Rogich said she would love cooperation between the cannabis industry, Culinary Union and the resorts to address the problem.

“I’ve been always very open about it, all these industries working together to get this illicit market out of the way,” she said. “Room cleaning is the way to do it.”

Culinary Secretary-Treasurer Ted Pappageorge, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday, said in a January interview with The Nevada Independent the labor group “had to use equity in our bargaining to win that right” to require daily cleaning. He added the daily room cleaning mandates don’t cover nonunion resorts, such as Red Rock Resorts, where the Culinary has engaged in a decades-long contract dispute.

“There are certain things the Legislature has a place [in] when it comes to workers,” Pappageorge said. “I can give you a long list of things Legislature takes up that also affects [collective] bargaining.”

He suggested that the Legislature’s failure to implement the room cleaning mandate itself came at a cost to the union. Pappageorge said if the union didn’t have to negotiate for daily room cleaning, the labor group could have bargained for more significant wage increases or additional health care benefits. 

Nevada Resort Association President Virginia Valentine, whose members lobbied to end the daily room cleaning mandates two years ago, said she was aware of the proposed bill draft. 

“We strongly opposed it in 2023 and our position has not changed,” Valentine said Tuesday.

A source familiar with negotiations around the ending of daily room cleaning in 2023 said that when the room cleaning mandates were passed in the 2020 special session to address the COVID public health emergency, the provisions of the bill including daily room cleaning were intended to sunset once the pandemic ended.

Supporters’ reasoning for backing the end of the mandate was that the need for the legislation went away once the governor's declaration of emergency went away. But because of changes to how COVID testing happened, which were tied to mandates in the bill language, the daily room cleaning portion of the bill remained in place.

The union is still determining its legislative agenda. In the 2024 election, Culinary unendorsed 18 Democratic state lawmakers because they supported removing the daily room cleaning mandate.

Pappageorge said in an interview after a bitter primary where a Democratic senator prevailed against a union-backed challenge that the union would support candidates “that are going to do the right thing.”