In today’s edition: 

• Lombardo’s crime bill unveiled
• Medical aid in dying moving forward?
• Condemnations of the Jan. 6 attack draws GOP ire

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From the Capital Bureau Chief:

We’re more than halfway through the legislative session, and the list of bills Gov. Joe Lombardo said he would veto has doubled (well, it’s gone from one to two).

The latest? Assm. Joe Dalia’s (D-Henderson) bill, AB346, co-sponsored with Assm. Danielle Gallant (R-Las Vegas). It seeks to legalize medical aid in dying or allow a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of medication for a terminally ill patient — it's the sixth legislative session where Nevada lawmakers have debated the idea.

Lawmakers set up a special select committee to hear testimony on the bill, with a hearing held last week. Dalia said he brought the legislation to give people a choice in a state that “prides itself on personal liberty and autonomy.”

He also said that the bill would have helped his father. Though doctors said morphine and palliative care would help his father die peacefully from an end-state chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Dalia said that “was not true.”

"It was over 12 hours of misery. He was awake and struggling and gurgling and convulsing ... He was suffering the entire time," Dalia said during the hearing. "When he did manage to say something ... it wasn't goodbye or I love you, it was, 'She promised, she lied, this f***ing sucks.'"

But in a social media post Friday, two days after the hearing, Lombardo said improvements in advanced pain management make end-of-life provisions “unnecessary” and said he would not sign Dalia's bill. He vetoed a similar bill in 2023.

In an interview with The Nevada Independent on Monday, Dalia said he was surprised by the timing of the governor’s announcement about halfway into the session, but added he is still working to move the bill — still subject to Friday’s first committee passage deadline — through the Legislature.

“We’ve got 55 days left, which is an eternity in legislative time,” he said.

As always, please send us your questions, thoughts and suggestions. You can reach me at [email protected]. 

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Bill Spotlight: Lombardo’s introduces public safety bill 

Gov. Joe Lombardo’s sweeping criminal justice measure finally dropped Monday, taking aim at fentanyl trafficking, domestic violence laws and firearm possession — but at a potential cost of $42 million more for prisons in the biennium, according to the Nevada Department of Corrections. 

Lombardo has pledged that the bill would enhance public safety and “restore a sense of law and order” to the state.

 Here’s what we know: 

• Top lines: The bill cracks down on repeat offenders, especially those with multiple felony convictions or those who committed a crime while on bail.
  • It would change the prosecution threshold for a “habitual criminal” charge to mean someone who has been convicted of a felony twice (five to 20 years in prison) or three times (a minimum of 10 years to life without parole). This would significantly decrease the previous felony conviction thresholds of five and seven charges, respectively. 
  • John Abel, government affairs director for the Las Vegas Police Protective Association (LVPPA), said it would help ease officers’ workload by targeting “serial criminals.”
    • “They're people that get up every day, and all they do is get up to commit crimes. This bill should target those people,” he said.
• Lombardo’s bill would also dramatically lower fentanyl trafficking charges, reflective of a larger debate between law enforcement and harm reduction advocates since 2019, when, as part of a larger set of criminal justice changes, legislators established low-level trafficking charges at 100 grams. 
  • Lombardo’s proposal would make possession of 28 grams or more of fentanyl possession a category A felony — punishable with life in prison with the possibility of parole after 10 years. 
  • It would also designate possession of between 4 to 14 grams of fentanyl as a category B felony, punishable by as long as six years in prison. 
• The bill also would lower the felony theft threshold from the current rate of $1,200 to $750 (Lombardo proposed the same change in 2023).
  • Abel said that lowering the threshold would help discourage retail theft.
    • “It's just like in California. I've seen video after video of people being recorded walking out of these shopping centers with hands full of clothes or handbags, saying, ‘Oh, you can't touch me,’” Abel said. 
    • State data, however, indicates that property theft has significantly declined during the past year.
  • Legislators made changes to the threshold just a few sessions ago as part of a broader effort to decrease the number of Nevadans incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. That bill raised the felony theft threshold from $650 to $1,500. 
• Though those proposals have drawn attention, Lombardo says his most significant proposal is prohibiting diversion courts for those who commit crimes against children and the elderly, similar to another proposal that failed in 2023.
• It would also take a stab at a broad set of other public safety issues, including DUI laws and domestic violence laws.
  • It expands domestic violence offenses to include robbery, kidnapping and conspiracies to commit domestic violence.
  • The bill would also clarify that driving under the influence of marijuana would constitute certain felony offenses, although it remains difficult to detect marijuana without a blood test. 
• Opponents of the measure say the introduction of Lombardo’s bill comes at the wrong time as it would increase prison populations at a time when Nevada’s prison system is already facing immense staffing shortages and a $53 million budget shortfall. 
  • The financial impacts of the bill could be massive, with the increase in offenders expected to eventually cost the state over $42 million per biennium, according to a fiscal note attached to the bill from the Department of Corrections.
    • Per that note, NDOC expects the bill to lead to an eventual increase in about 630 incarcerated offenders per year. 
  • “I don't know who in their right mind would vote for a proposal like this,” said Athar Haseebullah, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. “I think you'd have to actually be totally delusional, or just assume there's a never ending supply of money to be able to pay for this.”
  • LVPPA, however, said it “will definitely support the bill,” although Abel said that he could see the proposal further straining the state budget.

— Isabella Aldrete

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What we’re reading and writing

Follow the Money: Unions and labor groups gave Nevada legislators $1.6 million by Eric Neugeboren

Democrats received about four times as much from the industry as Republican legislators.

In the nation’s driest state, two bills seek to buy back and retire unused water rights by Amy Alonzo

“The most wonderful thing in the world is water!”

Trump admin freezes $29M in unspent COVID aid to Nevada schools by Rocio Hernandez and Gabby Birenbaum

Not digging this version of freeze tag …

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Is the ticket transparency bill karma for the Ticketmaster debacle?

Ticketmaster may have told the world to shake it off when frustration boiled over sales of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour tickets and scalpers' resale of tickets for exorbitant prices, but state lawmakers won’t tolerate it.

Sen. Julie Pazina (D-Las Vegas) hopes to address the bad blood through SB338, which would require tickets sellers subject to the state’s live entertainment tax to disclose the total ticket prices (including mandatory fees) at purchase and require them to issue a full ticket refund if an event is canceled within 30 days (not quite a fortnight). 

Long story short, that bill would align Nevada with a new rule from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) set to take effect in May, which prohibits ticket sellers from misrepresenting ticket fees (a problem Swifties and others know all too well). 

Ticket buyers often see a much higher price when they check out compared to initial prices, Pazina said during a Senate Commerce and Labor hearing last week. 

“These fees often carry vague labels such as convenience fees, processing fees or service charges,” she said. “It leaves consumers, our constituents, confused about their purpose and necessity.”

Pazina isn’t the only anti-hero. Assm. Bert Gurr (R-Elko) is also coming after ticket sellers, but his bill, AB431, is targeting resellers rather than aligning with the FTC ruling. 

— Tabitha Mueller, Isabella Aldrete

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 Keeping Tabs

🐘 GOP not a fan of Jan. 6 resolution — The Nevada Republican Party said a legislative resolution to condemn the Jan. 6 insurrection and President Donald Trump’s pardons of convicted rioters “puts the patriots who support President Trump in physical danger by presenting a one-sided, demonizing narrative.” The party also asked for a moment of silence during a hearing last week for Ashli Babbitt, the rioter whom U.S. Capitol Police killed that day, and Corey Comperatore, the firefighter killed during the assassination attempt against Trump last summer.

Lorena Biassotti, a Clark County School District trustee, also testified against the resolution, referring to the attack as a “so-called insurrection” and said it involved “conservatives protesting a rigged election.” 

Harry Dunn, an ex-Capitol police officer who was at the Capitol that day and helped present the resolution, said in response that “anybody that can watch [the footage] and say that is OK, I don't know what to tell you."

✍️ Bill counters federal layoffs — A bill introduced Monday by Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) directs state agencies to consider federal government experience equivalent to state work experience as droves of federal workers have been laid off by the Trump administration. Yeager told The Indy that he wishes Gov. Joe Lombardo would change these requirements via executive order, as other states have done. The bill would also lift a requirement that state workers have a college degree.

📓Helping English learners in school — Proponents of AB335 — heard last Tuesday and passed out of committee last Thursday — say students who are learning English could be better supported in the state. Bill sponsor Assm. Selena Torres-Fossett (D-Las Vegas) said she is hoping school districts will appoint dedicated administrators for English learners who will collaborate with schools to revise plans for English learners, support multilingual students to ensure academic success, track and monitor student progress, and overall ensure equity and identify barriers multilingual students may have. 

— Eric Neugeboren, Lizzie Ramirez

Looking Ahead

• Wednesday, April 9 at 11:30 a.m.: The Assembly Committee on Health and Human Services is hearing AB101, a bill that would clarify that existing state laws supersede any local action related to abortions, as well as prohibit health care facilities from publishing deceptive statements about their services.

Days until: 

• First committee passage deadline: 3
• First house passage deadline: 15
• Sine die: 55

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And to get you going into the week, a few social media posts that caught our eye: 

• X: Elmo is all of us.
• Instagram: Thousands of people came to Carson City over the weekend.
• X: Proof that not all Las Vegas legislators go home every weekend.
• X: We’re on a roller coaster that only goes down.

We’ll see you Thursday.

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