In this edition of Behind the Bar, we explore the lack of funding for universal pre-K and raises for state union workers.

The total represents an increase from the amount of money given to state legislators during the 2022 election cycle. Similar to prior election cycles, organized labor overwhelmingly donated to Democrats.

The state’s total vacancy rate has been cut roughly in half — to about 13 percent — since Lombardo took office in 2023, while the rate for actively recruited positions has dropped by more than 36 percent.

Nearly 3,000 state employees — including some working for the welfare agency and the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles — may soon be included in collective bargaining agreements under a major state worker union.

The state’s health insurance program is expected to use about $7.3 million from its catastrophic reserve fund to subsidize the monthly premium increases.

Highly rated union members with at least eight years of continuous service will earn bonuses of at least $100 twice a year. The deal also ensured that all state workers in July will get an 11 percent annual raise.

In a major legal test of a landmark 2019 law that allowed state workers to unionize, a Carson City judge ruled against Nevada’s largest state worker union Thursday, preserving a veto from Gov. Joe Lombardo that scuttled a $25 million appropriation funding a now-2-year-old state worker arbitration agreement.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 4041 alleged in a Friday statement that the plan from Gov. Joe Lombardo’s administration would “unlawfully” exclude thousands of state workers from longevity pay, an incentive program designed to boost salaries for some of the state’s longest tenured employees. 

The legal actions mark the latest escalation in a fight over a $25 million arbitration agreement that has now stretched two years — and two governors. 

With the clock ticking to the end of the fiscal year in June, a state worker pay bill remains in legislative limbo — a stall that Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas), the bill’s sponsor, says has come because the governor's staff has indicated they are unable to implement it.

During a Senate floor vote of the bill Monday afternoon, Cannizzaro and Senate Minority Leader Heidi Seevers Gansert (R-Reno) gave dueling speeches for and against the bill, as lawmakers voted 13-8 along party lines (with all Democrats in support) to pass the bill.

The bipartisan push to address state worker pay comes as Nevada faces vacancy rates upwards of 20 percent across state agencies and as state employee wages have lagged behind the national inflation rate.

Even late in his term, Gov. Steve Sisolak’s tenure was defined by his COVID response — a response he argued saved lives, even if it caused collateral economic damage. 

The board on Tuesday modified an agreement with AFSCME, which represents four bargaining units of about 5,300 combined state employees, and adopted a long-delayed bargaining agreement with the Nevada Police Union.

The Nevada Police Union — which represents the 735 highway patrol troopers, parole and probation officers, university police, public safety workers and other state-employed police included in the Category I Peace Officers category — was the only one of four recognized state worker collective bargaining groups to not reach a deal with the state ahead of the end of the 2021 legislative session last month. Arbitration sessions are scheduled for July.

Sisolak and members of the state Board of Examiners (composed of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state) voted 2-1 on Tuesday to approve the collective bargaining agreement between the state and the union representing around 110 Category II law enforcement officers, a group of positions including criminal investigators and youth parole counselors. Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, voted against the motion.

Faculty across the state’s higher education system are pushing for a new law this year that would expand the state’s nascent public collective bargaining infrastructure to include professors and other professional staff — a sharp break from years of control of the bargaining process by the Nevada System of Higher Education itself.

Congressional representatives across the state reported race-leading fundraising hauls this week, positioning each with an early money advantage more than a year in advance of next summer’s primary elections.

Neal said the state’s current bottoming out of Live Entertainment Tax revenues during the pandemic presents a golden opportunity for lawmakers to create tax parity and require professional sporting teams to pay the same tax that the state’s gaming industry and other live entertainment events have to pay.

In a joint press release issued Tuesday, AFSCME Local 4041 President Harry Schiffman and state Department of Administration Director Laura Freed announced that a tentative collective bargaining agreement including economic and non-economic provisions had been reached for four of the 11 occupational groups represented by the union.