Less than seven months into his first term, Gov. Joe Lombardo’s tenure has so far been dominated by work with the Legislature, including a pair of special sessions to finalize a portion of the state budget and authorize public funding for a new Major League Baseball stadium in Las Vegas.

Outside the Legislature, the Republican governor has signed wide-ranging executive orders aimed at eliminating regulations and cleaning up professional licensing requirements, as well as rescinding COVID-19 directives and altering the state’s approach to energy.

But how has Lombardo fared in sticking to promises he made on the campaign trail and during his first month in office?

The Nevada Independent is tracking the status of more than 40 promises Lombardo made through the “Lombardo Promise Tracker,” a feature launched before the 2023 legislative session that will continue to be updated through the governor’s first term. The Nevada Independent similarly tracked promises made by former Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak.

Early in his term, Lombardo achieved major policy and budgetary goals, including significant pay raises for state employees and a rollback of restorative justice school discipline policies from 2019.

But working alongside a Democrat-controlled Legislature that readily resisted some of the Republican governor’s top policy priorities, many other Lombardo pledges stalled or failed earlier this year. 

He compromised with Democratic legislative leaders on his efforts to modernize and overhaul executive branch administration and to expand access to charter schools and school choice more broadly. Meanwhile, his attempts to reverse recent Democrat-backed election and criminal justice policies fell flat.

The governor’s office responded to inquiries about Lombardo’s progress on several pledges for the July update of the tracker. Those answers are reflected in individual promises below and in the tracker.

With nearly three-and-a-half years left in his first term and another regular legislative session set to take place in 2025, The Nevada Independent has graded 15 promises as “completed” — representing more than one-third of Lombardo’s campaign and 2023 State of the State promises included in the tracker.

Another three are rated as “compromised” and eight as “failed,” with the progress of those promises, such as an effort to create the Office of School Choice, blocked by Democratic lawmakers, who hold sizable majorities in the Legislature. Though the ratings given to those promises were graded based on the results of the 2023 legislative session, The Nevada Independent may adjust or update the status of a promise if Lombardo pursues those policies in a future session or through executive action. 

Six promises stand as “not yet addressed,” including a campaign pledge to hold “Nevada’s school board members accountable by requiring school board members to have proper qualifications.” The Nevada Independent has graded 11 more promises as “in progress,” which primarily reflect pledges that can be monitored throughout Lombardo’s tenure as governor, such as a promise to never raise taxes.

If you have questions, see something that doesn’t look right or want to know more about why a promise is graded a certain way, feel free to reach out by emailing reporter Sean Golonka ([email protected]).

Below, we explore a subset of the 43 promises. To view the full promise tracker, click here.

STATE GOVERNMENT

Promise: Said his budget “will reserve more than $1 in savings for every new dollar in general fund spending.”

• Status: Completed
• Explanation: State lawmakers approved increases to the caps on the state’s main budget reserve accounts (the Rainy Day Fund and Education Stabilization Account, a separate reserve account for education spending) that will result in more funds being stored in state savings than the legislatively approved $1.8 billion increase in general fund spending over the biennium. That increase raised the two-year general fund budget from $9.2 billion to $11 billion. Lombardo’s office said that “as of July 1, there is $1.73 billion combined in the two savings accounts,” and that the office “expects total savings to grow far beyond $1.8 billion over the biennium” with the increased caps.
• Source: State of the State 2023

Promise: Said “not a penny of the state’s one-time surplus will be used to fund any recurring programs.”

• Status: Completed
• Explanation: Under the budget Lombardo approved, ongoing government programs and services are funded by ongoing state revenue sources (tax revenues collected over the two-year budget period), while surplus revenues went strictly toward one-time expenditures. When it comes to employee compensation, for example, salaries and pay raises are included in ongoing expenses, while a set quarterly bonuses approved for all state workers are considered one-time expenditures. A spokesperson for Lombardo said the governor signed a budget that “was structurally balanced against the state’s projected revenue for the upcoming biennium.” That is because the budget includes less in operational spending in each year than the state is projected to collect in tax revenues in each year.
• Source: State of the State 2023

Promise: Said his budget would increase “savings in the Rainy Day Fund from 20 percent to 30 percent … We will place another $630 million dollars in the Rainy Day Fund to be used when dark clouds again gather on the horizon.”

• Status: Compromised
• Explanation: Though Lombardo proposed increasing the cap on the Rainy Day Fund — an emergency state savings account — from 20 percent of general fund appropriations in a year to 30 percent, that initial proposal did not succeed. He ultimately reached an agreement with Democratic lawmakers to raise the cap to 26 percent through SB431, still pushing the projected cap well above $1 billion during the biennium. As of July 24, the Rainy Day Fund has more than $904 million, and is expected to rise to about $1.2 billion this fiscal year, a representative of the treasurer’s office told The Nevada Independent.
• Source: State of the State 2023

Promise: Said his budget would set aside $315 million for “the Nevada Way Fund, a new sub-account to be used for transformational economic development projects and critical infrastructure needs,” with the fund overseen by the governor and bipartisan leadership of the Legislature.

• Status: Failed
• Explanation: Creation of the Nevada Way Fund was included as part of the governor’s proposed sweeping government modernization bill, SB431. However, the bill faced pushback from Democratic lawmakers, some of whom expressed concern that the bill would strip power from the Legislature, which is responsible for approving state spending. The measure was substantially pared down on the final day of the legislative session, with the proposed Nevada Way Fund and its funding removed from the bill. Lombardo has not said whether he would again seek to create this fund in the 2025 session.
• Source: State of the State 2023

Promise: Provide “an 8 percent [pay] increase for all state workers next year and an additional 4 percent increase the year after,” as well as “$2,000 annual bonuses for every executive branch state employee, to be paid quarterly.”

• Status: Completed
• Explanation: Though the state employee pay bill Lombardo signed (AB522) did not exactly align with this proposal — the quarterly bonuses were lower than he proposed — The Nevada Independent is rating this promise as completed because Lombardo approved raises that increase employee compensation above the initial proposal. For the fiscal year ending in June 2024, state employees are receiving raises ranging from 10 percent to 13 percent, and in the following fiscal year, raises of more than 11 percent — the largest pay raises in decades for state workers.
• Source: State of the State 2023

EDUCATION

Promise: “Increase school choice options by expanding access to charter schools, opportunity scholarships and education saving accounts.”

• Status: Compromised
• Explanation: Lombardo did not succeed in getting legislation passed to expand Opportunity Scholarships or re-establish Education Savings Accounts. As part of his wide-ranging education bill, AB400, Lombardo initially proposed increased funding and expanded eligibility for Opportunity Scholarships, a tax credit-funded school choice program that families can use to pay for their children’s private school tuition, but those provisions were taken out of the final version of the bill signed by Lombardo. Still, a part of AB400 that was signed into law expanded access to charter schools by allowing county and city governments to sponsor new public charter schools, and setting aside $14 million for transportation options for students attending charter schools. 
• Source: Campaign 2022

Promise: Said he would increase the threshold for students who qualify for Opportunity Scholarships from those whose household incomes are at or below 300 percent of the federal poverty line to those at or below 500 percent of the federal poverty line.

• Status: Failed
• Explanation: Though Lombardo proposed this change as a part of his omnibus education bill, AB400, Democratic legislative leaders remained staunchly opposed to expanding the Opportunity Scholarships program. Lombardo’s proposed changes to Opportunity Scholarships were ultimately removed from the bill before it reached his desk. 
• Source: IndyTalks January 2023

Promise: Create the Office of School Choice within the Department of Education.

• Status: Failed
• Explanation: Though Lombardo proposed this change as a part of his omnibus education bill, AB400, Democratic lawmakers removed language creating the proposed new office before passing the bill and sending it to Lombardo for a signature.
• Source: State of the State 2023

Promise: Said he would “work with the Legislature to immediately repeal the changes made” by a 2019 bill (AB168) that established restorative justice policies for school discipline, which he described as “a disaster for our students and teachers.”

• Status: Completed
• Explanation: After a lengthy push and pull between Democratic and Republican lawmakers over the specifics of a proposed bill overhauling the 2019 restorative justice law, Lombardo ultimately signed a pair of complementary school discipline bills amending that 2019 law. The two bills, AB285 and AB330, make it easier for school officials to suspend or expel students who are younger than 11, including allowing for students age 8 and older to be “expelled and permanently expelled” for committing battery against a school employee. 
• Source: Campaign 2022

Promise: Said he would impose “a new five-year rule: Schools have five years to improve literacy scores and to ensure that students who are not proficient in reading do not advance beyond third grade, until they are brought up to grade level.”

• Status: Completed
• Explanation: Lombardo’s AB400 will reinstate a retention requirement — originally implemented in 2017 and repealed in 2019, before students were affected — beginning in the 2028-29 school year. Though that timing gives schools five years to address literacy scores, the new law still mandates that by 2029, third grade students who do not achieve a passing score on a standardized reading exam will be held back if they are not granted a good-cause exemption to advance to fourth grade.
• Source: State of the State 2023

CRIME AND PUBLIC SAFETY

Promise: Said he would “repeal Steve Sisolak’s soft-on-crime policies and replace them with common-sense legislation focused on keeping our communities safe and violent criminals off our streets and out of our schools. Joe will get rid of reduced sentences for drug traffickers and burglars, eliminate leniency for career criminals, and end Sisolak’s anti-police practices.”

• Status: Compromised
• Explanation: Though Lombardo introduced a wide-ranging criminal justice bill (SB412) meant to accomplish this pledge, the measure faced stiff opposition from Democratic legislative leaders who signaled an unwillingness to roll back Democrat-supported criminal justice policies passed in recent sessions. The bill did not receive an initial hearing until the final day of the session, when lawmakers passed out a significantly amended version of the measure that included just five provisions, including prohibiting early discharge from probation for someone convicted of home invasion, creating an enhanced penalty for drug crimes carried out with a firearm and changing the definition of strangulation in the context of domestic violence. Separately, Lombardo signed a bill (SB35) to increase penalties for fentanyl trafficking and lower thresholds for prosecuting the crime — though the bill fell short of his proposal in SB412 to increase felony penalties for possession of fentanyl in any amount.
• Source: Campaign 2022

Promise: Provide “a two-grade increase for all public safety employees above what is recommended for all public employees to help bring them closer to parity with local agencies, and to ensure we are no longer the training ground for local government police forces.”

• Status: Completed
• Explanation: On top of historically large pay raises for state employees, Lombardo also approved a range of one-, two- and three-grade increases for state public safety employees, as part of the state employee pay bill (AB522). Each grade increase typically amounts to a 5 percent difference.
• Source: State of the State 2023

ABORTION

Promise: Said he does “not support an abortion ban in Nevada,” adding “Nevada is unique in that our state law is already set, and that only you, the voters, can change it. I support that because I trust the voters of this state to make good decisions.”

• Status: In progress
• Explanation: This will be monitored as an ongoing promise throughout Lombardo’s term, reflecting whether the governor expresses support for any bans on abortion stricter than the limit in Nevada law, which bars the procedure after 24 weeks of pregnancy, unless necessary to preserve the life or health of the pregnant person.
• Source: Campaign 2022

Promise: Said the state “won’t prosecute women from another state that seek a legal abortion in Nevada.”

• Status: Completed
• Explanation: Lombardo signed SB131, a bill from Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) that codifies Democratic former Gov. Steve Sisolak’s executive order protecting out-of-state abortion patients seeking care in Nevada from prosecution, regardless of other states’ laws. 
• Source: Campaign 2022

ELECTIONS

Promise: Said he would introduce an “Election Integrity Reform Package” that “requires an ID to vote” and that he would “also eliminate ballot harvesting, end universal mail ballots and create a bipartisan panel to oversee our elections system.”

• Status: Failed
• Explanation: Democratic lawmakers rejected Lombardo’s efforts to overhaul Nevada’s election administration during the 2023 session, with Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) describing Lombardo’s proposal as a “non-starter” prior to the start of the session. Lombardo’s elections bill (SB405) attempted to end universal mail-in voting, move up the deadline to submit ballots and require people to show identification to vote. But the bill did not receive a single hearing and died without a vote. 
• Source: Campaign 2022

Promise: Said “all mail-in ballots should be received by the time polls close on Election Day, as opposed to 5 p.m. four days following an election.”

• Status: Failed
• Explanation: Lombardo’s elections bill (SB405) sought to move up the deadline for mail-in ballots to be counted if received by the time the polls close on Election Day. The proposal did not move forward, however, as Democratic legislative leaders said they opposed any bills that would restrict election access.
• Source: State of the State 2023

GAMING

Promise: Said he would “work with the [Gaming] Control Board to ensure the logjam is cleared,” in regards to “the time required to gain approval from the Gaming Control Board Lab for new products.”

• Status: Completed
• Explanation: Lombardo’s comments about the “logjam” — along with his executive order calling on state agencies to eliminate unnecessary regulations — spurred action from the Gaming Control Board, which has so far pushed to find ways to speed up its technology approval process and remove outdated regulations dealing with the approval process for gaming equipment and systems.
• Source: State of the State 2023

Promise: Said the state should repeal SB4 from the 2020 special legislative session, which “imposed mandatory COVID daily cleaning and time-off requirements in our hotels that are no longer relevant.”

• Status: Completed
• Explanation: Lombardo signed SB441, acting on a priority for the gaming industry by repealing a portion of SB4 that imposed requirements to clean hotel rooms on a daily basis.
• Source: State of the State 2023