Lawmakers have convened in Carson City this week to kick off the 83rd regular session of the Nevada Legislature. They’re working with a Democratic majority and Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who vetoed a record 75 bills in the 2023 session.
If legislators and the governor himself can heed the plea for bipartisanship that Lombardo closed out his January State of the State address with—“We must set our sights on shared goals and rise above harsh political rhetoric,” he said—Nevadans might be able to expect a different state of play in the 2025 session.
But partisan politics might be hard to avoid. In the weeks leading up to the February 3 start of the Legislature, lawmakers were forced to ask themselves whether the budgets they planned for—largely made up of federal funding—would be enough to get the state through the coming years.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo January 27 freezing payments for federal grants and programs. The freeze was temporarily blocked by a federal judge on January 28 and then rescinded by the Trump administration on January 29.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists Trump’s executive orders for funding reviews—to weed out things like climate change and Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives—still were in “full force and effect.” While the OMB memo did not ever take effect, Nevada Democrats said potential funding freezes would cause “massive confusion for Nevada families, delay delivery of vital services in health care and education and could plunge our state budget into further chaos.”
“The Governor’s office must demand answers from the federal government … while providing the Legislature a full accounting of all affected state programs and services,” Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro and Speaker Steve Yeager said in a joint statement.
The governor’s office did not respond to Las Vegas Weekly’s request for comment.
Politics aside, here are a few things to keep an eye on during the next 120-day session.
Affordable housing
Lombardo zeroed in on this topic during his State of the State address, and rightly so. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Nevada is the worst in the nation for affordable housing with only 14 homes available for every 100 extremely low-income (making 0% to 30% of area median income) families that need one. Las Vegas also ranks as having the worst affordable housing shortage of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.
Lombardo—who vetoed four bills in 2023 that aimed to address Nevada’s summary eviction process and other affordable housing issues—pitched the Nevada Attainable Housing Act, claiming that it would support $1 billion in new “attainable housing” units. Whether “attainable” means “affordable” has yet to be clarified.
Assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui, D-Las Vegas, has said she will reintroduce a bill that would cap rent increases at 10% for people older than 62 and for people with disabilities. The bill, which Lombardo vetoed in 2023, also would prevent landlords from keeping unused fees for prospective tenants’ background checks.
Democrats are also moving to tackle corporations buying up droves of homes and driving up costs. According to a news release, Democrats will propose legislation to outlaw the purchase of more than 100 homes in a calendar year.
Education
Under Lombardo and Democratic leadership, the Legislature has made significant strides in education—another one of Nevada’s areas that often ranks close to last in the nation. In 2023, they passed a $12 billion K-12 budget, the largest education budget in state history; they created a $250 million matching fund for teacher raises; and they passed legislation mandating the Clark County School District to offer a teacher pathway program at every high school.
We’ll see if they can keep that momentum up in 2025. Lombardo said he wants to make teacher raises permanent, and Cannizzaro has announced the EDUCATE Act, which would “create universal pre-K for all four year-olds” and impose additional oversight on school districts and public charter schools.
Assemblyman Reuben D’Silva, D-Las Vegas, who serves as a member of the Assembly Education Committee (and as a CCSD high school teacher when Legislature’s not in session) says he and fellow Democrats plan to bring back legislation that would implement universal school lunch—a measure that Lombardo vetoed in 2023. He also plans to bring back a bill to address pandemic learning loss by scaling back standardized testing and allowing for more instruction time.
Health care
According to a recent report from the Nevada Health Care Workforce Research Center at the University of Nevada, Reno, nearly seven in 10, or 2.3 million Nevadans reside in a Health Professional Shortage Area. It’s important to note that rural areas fare worse than urban ones.
Dr. Marc Kahn, dean of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV, has said the key to solving Nevada’s physician shortage is to “grow our own” by increasing funding for graduate medical education residencies in the state. And Lombardo said in January that he was seeking to “double” the state’s investment in graduate medical education.
Lombardo also said he expects “bipartisan support” for splitting up the Department of Health and Human Services to create the Nevada Health Authority, “which will be assigned the critical responsibilities of managing Medicaid, the [state] health exchange, employee benefits, mental health funding and other services,” Lombardo said during his January address.
Sen. Fabian Doñate, chair of the Senate Health and Human Service Committee, says he expects there will be “synergy” between Lombardo’s office and the Legislature, “because we’re working toward solving the same issues.”
Doñate will be re-introducing a bill originally introduced in 2023, now titled SB124, that would allow for medical graduates who attended foreign medical schools to receive a limited medical license from the state. After two years of practice under the limited license, the state could then issue an unrestricted license, according to a draft of the bill.
Doñate’s office said they have identified 50 physicians in the state who would be allowed to apply for a limited license under this law.
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