Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo's issues with Nevada's sprawling body of boards and commissions — the 300 or so civilian-run bodies that provide recommendations and oversee professional licensing requirements across the state — are already well-known.

During the 2023 session, his administration submitted SB431 — a wide-ranging bill that, among other things, established an oversight office over many of the state's occupational licensing boards. 

Then in 2025, the Department of Business and Industry followed up with SB78, an ambitious bill which sought to consolidate and increase oversight over several boards. Due to its broad scope, it faced swift opposition from boards — which, unlike most state agencies, can hire contract lobbyists to defend their interests — and legislative Democrats. Though Senate Democrats later responded with their own bill, it shared the same fate as SB78 and never passed.

In March, however, the attorney general's office — led by Democratic gubernatorial front-runner Aaron Ford — issued a general opinion regarding the ability of such boards to hire or contract with lobbyists. In it, the office states that, since boards collect mandatory membership fees from practitioners of regulated occupations, lobbying activities by such boards must be restricted to the statutory goals of the board. Ideological or political lobbying — or, presumably, hiring high-ranking party officials for do-nothing, make-work jobs as the Nevada State Board of Dental Examiners did in 2019 — is likely prohibited by the First Amendment.

Then in April, Democratic gubernatorial underdog candidate Alexis Hill weighed in as well with a plan to simplify state licensing requirements for veterans whose service includes health care, law enforcement, commercial driving or other work experience.

Though Ford's direct support for his office's opinion is unknown and Hill's call for simplification is narrow, it's still encouraging to see that reforming the state's steadily accreting body of boards and commissions enjoys enough bipartisan support for politicians to avoid being actively opposed to it.

Though the opinion issued by the attorney general's office was limited solely to lobbying activities by occupational licensing boards and commissions, its ramifications could prove significant. According to consultant activity reports submitted to the Interim Finance Committee, licensing boards spent more than $400,000 on lobbying during the 2025 legislative session:

Source: Nevada Legislature's Interim Finance Committee, August 13, 2025 IFC Meeting Packet Volume III, Item N.9(b)

For many boards, the largest consulting expense reported to the Legislature was for "government affairs," "legislative services" and other euphemisms for paying someone to lobby the branch of government responsible for writing the laws each board is supposed to follow. 

The Nevada State Contractors Board, for example, reported spending $72,000 on "public relations outreach and representation." The Board of Optometry's sole contracting expense was $20,000 for a "government affairs/legislative services consultant." The Board of Cosmetology also only reported one contracting expense — $30,000 to Western Public Affairs, a lobbying firm co-founded by former Assm. William Horne (D-Las Vegas), in exchange for "lobbyist services." 

This, of course, is nothing new. As The Nevada Independent reported in 2019, boards in the aggregate regularly spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on professional lobbyists each year.

What is new, however, is that the efforts first established in 2023 to hold boards to the same level of transparency applied to every other state agency are finally starting to come into focus. For the better part of a year, the Office of Nevada Boards, Commissions, and Councils Standards has been working on draft regulations that should hold these public bodies accountable — and these boards are, in fact, public bodies. If they weren't, they wouldn't exist in statute, nor would they have the legal authority to set and collect mandatory licensing fees from Nevada's workforce.

One proposed regulation, for example, requires each board to maintain a website. Those of you who remember my columns about general improvement districts in November and December may remember that, after it was discovered that several districts did not have an online presence, the Legislature passed a law requiring districts to maintain one. General improvement districts, however, are not the only statutory castoffs struggling to meet even this basic requirement for public administration and transparency — the website for the Nevada Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners, for example, has been down since December and, the last time I checked, redirects to an Indonesian online slot machine company.

Another proposed regulation requires board members to attend and participate in board meetings. If you're wondering why this wasn't required before now, well, that's a great question because it's still not required — the regulation hasn't been adopted yet and likely won't be adopted until June at the absolute earliest.

Since proposed regulations have to be approved by the Legislature, however, the process of developing and adopting these regulations creates yet another opportunity for Nevada's boards and commissions to continue to funnel money from Nevada's struggling professional workforce to well-connected lobbyists. 

If the actions and statements of Nevada's gubernatorial candidates are any indication, however, perhaps there's hope that this taxpayer-funded welfare program for former legislators will come to an end soon — regardless of whom we ultimately elect to occupy the governor's mansion in November.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons and a recurring opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenvor email him at [email protected]. You can also message him on Signal at dcolborne.64.