Nevada’s legislative process is far from open and transparent. It’s full of behind-the-scenes negotiations, political quid pro quo and closed-door meetings between lawmakers, lobbyists and special interests. 

Unfortunately, that lack of transparency isn’t merely some unintended consequence of a broken system. It seems to be a deliberate strategy by those involved — a strategy that lawmakers are evidently not keen to dismantle anytime soon. 

The end of session chaos of every biennium illustrates how unapproachable the legislative process can seem to ordinary Nevadans, voters and even journalists. As rules are suspended, last-minute bill rewrites are hastily ushered through and intense lobbying jeopardizes key political priorities in the waning days before sine die, it’s easy to see just how far from “public” most lawmaking actually is in Carson City. 

However, even before those crazy final weeks of the session upend legislative rules, the system is hardly a testament to open government. 

For starters, the Legislature is exempt from the state’s open meeting and public records laws — an exemption that ensures much of the policy debates, negotiations and disagreements surrounding critical bills take place far from the prying eyes of ordinary citizens. 

That seems like a pretty obvious violation of open government principles. Getting something done to fix it, however, hasn’t proven easy. 

Indeed, a proposal to hold the Legislature to the same open meeting standards as other government entities didn’t even make it out of committee last session. According to The Nevada Independent, the chairperson of the Assembly Legislative Operations and Elections Committee, Assm. Erica Mosca (D-Las Vegas), said AJR3 never got a hearing because she and bill sponsor Assm. Heidi Kasama (R-Las Vegas) couldn’t reach a compromise before the session ended.  

The fact that Mosca and Kasama needed to reach some agreement behind closed doors before a committee hearing was even possible is, ironically, the exact sort of clandestine lawmaking that likely inspired such reform in the first place. 

It wasn’t the only transparency proposal Kasama would see die in such a fashion. AJR2 would have required the Legislature to publicly post the language of any bill for 72 hours before holding a vote, but it, too, ultimately failed to advance out of the same committee. 

Mandating that bills be publicly accessible prior to being voted upon doesn’t seem like a big ask — especially in lieu of certain special interests scrambling to throw together massive subsidy proposals at the last minute for everything from stadiums to movie studios in recent years. 

The idea that lawmakers and the public should have the opportunity to fully vet the language of such bills isn’t unconscionable. What legitimate concerns might have derailed such a commonsense proposal?

Well, we don’t know. Perhaps lawmakers have completely valid concerns about such mandates in a fast-paced legislative session where time can run out for even the most talked-about policy proposals. However, like the “compromises” that couldn’t be reached for Kasama’s open-meeting bill, such concerns were never robustly discussed by lawmakers — at least not publicly. 

The quiet death of Kasama’s transparency proposals — as well as a proposal by state Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Henderson) to combine the two ideas — demonstrates just how uninterested legislative leadership was in peeling back the proverbial curtain for “we the people.” 

The reason for such reluctance isn’t difficult to understand, considering just how repulsive most voters would find the type of political horse-trading that inevitably takes place during a session. Indeed, legislative attorneys indirectly seemed to confirm such suspicions when they argued that lawmakers would likely “censor” themselves if they thought their internal deliberations were going to be made public. 

However, pointing out that voters would likely abhor much of what currently goes on behind closed doors is hardly a robust defense of the status quo — nor is it indicative of a culture that is serious about dismantling allegations of impropriety, corruption or malfeasance. 

During the last election cycle, Republicans attacked Democratic leadership for supposedly fostering a “culture of corruption” in the Legislature — and it’s easy to assume such talking points will crop up again in the next election. Democrats certainly didn’t do themselves any favors by passing a Christmas tree bill in 2023 that shelled out taxpayer dollars to some politically connected nonprofits, and politics has a way of bringing those things back to the surface again and again. 

But the truth is, even without such eyebrow-raising conduct in 2023, the utter lack of transparency in the legislative process inherently breeds opportunity for unsavory political shenanigans — making allegations of impropriety low-hanging fruit for political opponents, regardless of details. 

Whether or not actual corruption has resulted from the Legislature’s culture of backroom wheeling and dealing is probably a matter of partisan opinion. However, the notion that a lack of transparency could breed such illicit behavior shouldn’t be. 

Unfortunately, discussions between lawmakers about potentially fixing such an opaque system was, itself, conducted in the shadows. Behind the very doors Kasama’s reforms were attempting to open for the public, her proposals died a quiet death — casualties of a system so hostile to public oversight, they weren’t even afforded a hearing. 

That’s not indicative of a process that is broken by accident, and it says an awful lot about the people running it. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.

The Nevada Independent welcomes informed, cogent rebuttals to opinion pieces such as this. They can be submitted here.