Lawmakers managed to do something refreshing this past week. They moved with uncommon alacrity to address the state’s ongoing egg shortage by whisking AB171 through the Assembly and Senate in Carson City.

Although the ballot question would have only removed the constitutional guarantee of the board’s existence and not repealed any other existing laws, it marked the latest tension point between Nevada lawmakers and the Board of Regents. 

A push by some animal activist groups such as the Humane Society has led to several states banning the competitions, but in Nevada, whether or not the competitions should continue has been a source of debate throughout the last decade.

The plan collapsed after a souring relationship between UNLV and the Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation. Two years ago, the groups celebrated the construction of a medical school building.

Ross Armstrong, the executive director of the commission, said people — namely government officials — may not be aware of the resources the board provides to demystify ethics laws and ensure they are in compliance with the laws.

The corporation behind the construction of the UNLV medical education building has big plans for expansion — and is now pinning its hopes on new legislation that would circumvent the state’s drawn-out process for getting government building projects off the ground.

In the weeks before Election Day, Republicans across the country and in Nevada appeared poised for significant victories, buoyed by polls indicating GOP wins up and down the ticket. But the much-hyped red wave never materialized.

Thursday's vote will end more than two months of uncertainty after the resignation of former chancellor Melody Rose in April.

Administrators, officials and lobbyists in the orbit of Nevada’s higher education system shared a common refrain coming out of this year’s legislative session: It could have been worse.

With the last-minute addition of an amendment gutting several provisions that could have affected funding to UNR’s Cooperative Extension, the Senate Finance Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to approve SB287, a measure that would formally recognize UNLV and the Desert Research Institute (DRI) as land-grant institutions alongside UNR.

Almost as soon as the dust had settled on Question 1, proponents of the change had zeroed in on a likely cause for the failure: the language was too complicated for thousands of voters to understand what they were voting on.

Against a backdrop of increasingly unaffordable housing options, two measures heard at the Legislature on Tuesday highlighted the deep divide between developers and affordable housing advocates.

The bill, SB344, is sponsored by Sen. James Ohrenschall (D-Las Vegas) and would prohibit a person from importing, possessing, selling, transferring or breeding dangerous wild animals — a classification that includes elephants, non-human primates, bears, tigers and other big cats. Certain groups would be exempt from the ban, though, such as licensed veterinarians, law enforcement, animal control, the Department of Wildlife and entities accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which is a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of zoos.

When Gov. Steve Sisolak announced more than $155 million in private funds for a centerpiece building at the UNLV Medical School last November, it was the end result of nearly a decade of negotiating over an edifice that had more than once been thrown into the waste bin.

Those meetings and others held between Sisolak with high-powered lobbyists, legislators with major pending bills, federal government officials and a slew of well-known business leaders were revealed in a public records request submitted by The Nevada Independent for the governor’s calendar through the legislative session.