We're sitting down with local journalists to review and get updates on Nevada's ongoing 81st legislative session.

That's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

(Kipp Ortenburger) One quarter of Nevada's four-month-long legislative session is in the books, as they say, but thus far those books seem a little light.

As the journalists sitting around our virtual roundtable today have been reporting, little has gotten done comparatively in previous session starts.

But of course our 2021 session is still operating under COVID-19 precautions; namely, legislative buildings remaining closed to the public, and of course legislative activity conducted primarily via virtual means.

Still, major legislative priorities on any landmark bills in education funding, criminal justice or COVID-19 recovery have yet to come forth, and maybe in this void comes the hint of a bill for industry-specific, self-governed counties within counties or "Innovation Zones."

We'll get our journalists' impressions and perspectives on this impending proposal, also the session thus far itself, coverage of key priorities, and what of course they're tracking over the next month as well.

Please welcome Colton Lochhead, reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal; Michelle Rindels, reporter for the Nevada Independent; Michael Lyle, journalist for the Nevada Current, and Bert Johnson, legislative reporter for Nevada Public Radio.

Michael, I want to go to you first.

I mean, it has been a very unique legislative session of course with some of the COVID restrictions amongst many other things.

Can you give us kind of your first impression from a journalist's perspective of what it's like right now to cover the session?

(Michael Lyle) With my position at Nevada Current, we don't have a full-time person up in Carson covering the legislators, so like last session, we did a lot of traveling back and forth where we'd watch virtually down here for some weeks and then up in Carson for other weeks, just depending on what was happening.

Kind of yet to be determined whether that's going to be happening yet.

It is weird on the perspective of talking with sources.

A lot of organizers, a lot of people that are working with impacted communities, talking with them and hearing their concerns, I think that's been the biggest change.

I mean, they always have concerns going into legislative session, making sure lawmakers hear from them, but I think their current concerns are a little bit intensified this year because they don't have that face time anymore.

So it's hard for them to gauge how lawmakers are taking their concerns, their voices seriously.

I know there was concern, especially there was a bill hearing for no-knock warrants that was considered or being presented by the Attorney General's office, and testimony was only 10 minutes for support and opposition.

That really hurt a lot of organizers because they had people lined up ready to talk and there was no indication that they were going to cut it that short.

I know part of it was lawmakers saying oh, we only have so much time, or we only have so much ability to manage these online systems.

-Michelle and Colton both, you've been up there; you are up there.

Let's talk a little bit more about being physically present.

Of course what Michael is talking about is maybe some of the barriers we're seeing in the virtual system.

Being there personally, are you running into any roadblocks?

I know there's a limited number of journalists that can actually get into the buildings themselves.

Give us some context, and Michelle, we'll start with you on just what it's like to be up there right now.

(Michell Rindels) Yes.

In certain settings they're limiting the number of people in the floor sessions.

So for example, there can only be two journalists up in the gallery of the Assembly.

And actually Colton and I got stuck outside the doors the other day.

Usually you can watch all the proceedings on the live stream and it's not a big deal, but when they do go on a recess, they shut the live stream down.

You can't tell what's going on on the floor.

We had a situation where Republican Annie Black was calling for a motion to reopen the building immediately and there was a lot of chatter.

There was a lot of people huddling up in front of the dais, and it was just-- we were watching through this window trying to get a glimpse of what's going on.

And the capitol police, they're so sweet but they're like don't you dare go up there because there's already two people up in the gallery.

So it's been a little bit of a challenge with those types of restrictions.

-Colton, that's another element of this too.

Of course there's still safety concerns in all of our government buildings of course, and with the legislative session going right now, we're seeing that on Capitol Hill right now of session being closed yesterday because of it.

You know, are you seeing limitations there also?

Maybe we bring the conversation back to the public here and, you know, the public voice and how that's coming through or not coming through in what you've been covering.

(Colton Lochhead) Yes.

Michael touched on this in that hearing on the no-knock warrants.

It's something that really jumped out to me is by limiting it to 10 minutes, it's not like a normal 10-minute type of public comment that you could have or public testimony that you can usually have up here in the legislature where people can go to the-- they'll be sitting at a table, usually three to a table, and you can kind of go through like rapid-fire testimony pretty quickly.

But with this current system, everything is exaggerated, everything is slower because they have to go through the phone system where they have to sit there and call out a person's number.

Then they have to sit there, dial the number like star six or whatever it is, and then they can talk and they get two minutes.

So if you go-- if they take up two minutes, then you're maybe getting four, maybe five people total in a time period like that, so it's definitely limiting, you know, the amount of public participation.

I know Speaker Frierson has talked about this, having the vote.

He's tried to say that this has been the most accessible legislature because people can call in.

-Who are the decision-makers there on maybe being able to widen that time limit?

Is that something that just the heads of the Senate and the Assembly could change just kind of on the spot?

-Yes.

I mean, it comes down to-- go ahead, Michelle.

-It's really up to the committee chairperson to make these types of calls and say you only have 10 minutes.

There's nothing logistically limiting them from doing that but, you know, I think sometimes they, for whatever reason, want to kind of keep the timeframe under control so we see these situations where some committees have limitations like this, some will say okay, we're going to have 30 minutes from each side and some committee chairs don't put any limitations on it.

-Bert, I want to come to you.

I want to get your perspectives as well, coming to us with I think probably the best audio we've ever had on our virtual roundtable at Nevada Week, and we wouldn't expect anything less from KNPR.

Thank you so much for being here.

But with that said, you're coming from a different perspective, a producer and a writer and working in public radio.

What are some of your impressions on how public radio is covering such a unique legislative session?

(Bert Johnson) Well, it's interesting, you know, obviously as a fellow broadcast journalist, I think you'll be able to relate to this.

When you're trying to distill very complicated proposed legislation down for an audience who's listening to you, it's a much different process than writing it out.

What's interesting about my job I guess is I get to do a little of both.

I have my feet in both worlds.

So it's been an interesting experience, trying to first of all identify, you know, what my priorities for coverage will be, and that's a developing process, still in the works.

But I'm definitely putting an emphasis on bills that seem to have a lot of broad support, and I've also heard from both lawmakers and lobbyists and activists at this point, that there's a strong focus on revenue-neutral bills this time around because the state is facing so many challenges with the budget due to COVID-19.

So all that said, you know, it's been really interesting to cover this from afar, so to speak.

I'm up here in Reno and I do go into the building, but as Michelle was explaining, you know, sometimes your physical access to a hearing or a room in the building is very limited.

So just trying to keep tabs on all the hearings that you can catch online and then doing your best to follow up with lawmakers afterward.

It's a bit of a challenge, and I'm still figuring it out to be honest.

-Yes, you bring up a really great point.

Michael, I want to go to you and Colton as well.

Let's talk about those budget-neutral bills that are being proposed and kind of where we are.

Both Michael and Colton, you both have addressed how slow or light the agenda seems to be over this first month.

Michael, we also have obviously a very large COVID bill that is going through our federal government right now.

Is that one of the reasons why maybe we're seeing budget-neutral bills that are going through right now?

Everybody's just kind of waiting to see maybe where that relief goes, or are there other reasons?

-I actually absolutely believe they're waiting for the federal government to essentially save the state.

I think looking for other budget solutions, I mean, we're going to see some of those come up, whether it's taxing for the mines or other revenue sources.

It's just-- it takes a lot of political calculation to actually go through those processes and actually look at those policies, so the easier solution, which I think is what they're leaning on, is actually wait for the federal government to essentially save them and provide a way out to look at other revenue sources and to have some funding that doesn't put them in a risky situation, especially with midterms that are going to be kicking off here soon enough.

-Colton, let's get your perspective too, and I wanted to bring in some of the early coverage you had and opining that there were no cat memes when virtual session started here and some of the committees.

I mean, that's kind of where we were, I guess, early on when the session first started.

But what's your take on this?

Why has the session been so light and so slow?

-I think it's s combination of, like Michael said, a combination of the federal government and kind of waiting on where the federal government is going to be, where they're going to-- how long it'll take to get this relief package passed and how long it'll take for that money to get to the state.

Then additionally they've been playing it slow because of the restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the legislative leadership has talked about it.

They've been open at least about their plan to kind of take it slow.

I don't think any of us expected it to be this slow when they said that.

It's kind of still like-- it's still crawling.

It's still kind of a crawl at this point.

You know, we're more than a month into this now, and we just seem to be going through just so few bill hearings overall.

We're not really-- I think we just had our first-- I think maybe this week or last week-- we just had our first substantive bill pass, and that was the lobbyist bill that was passed out of one chamber.

So that's where we are.

We're noting that a bill that changes how lobbyists here kind of have to register, being the most notable bill to really make any kind of movement at this point and we're, you know, a month into the session.

So it seems to be they're kind of waiting to see.

I know what they want to do, they've said before that legislative leadership has said that they're waiting for this, you know, funding to get the staff in the building vaccinated, and if all goes to plan, that should be fully everybody in the building or most people in the building should be fully vaccinated sometime around early April, and from there, they said they could start moving things, reopening the building at least in some form or phase, and from there that's where we could start seeing things start to pick up.

-I'll just add-- -Yes, absolutely, Bert, let's hear from you and then Michelle, let's hear from you.

-Thank you.

I just wanted to add that I've heard from lawmakers themselves that there's a real emphasis on getting all of their ducks in a row on a given bill before they introduce it.

So, you know, this is my first regular session.

I covered both special sessions over the summer, but I had been surprised by the amount of bills I had heard being teased in other folks' reporting and from lawmakers themselves versus the number of actual bills that have been formally introduced.

For instance, I was talking to Senator Dallas Harris about this, and she was telling me some of her criminal justice reform bills are still in development.

Before they get introduced, it seems like there's a real focus on ironing out as many wrinkles as they can before they start having that discussion in the committee or on the floor.

-Michelle, let's hear from you, and I have a question based off what Bert just said.

Is that a normal process, kind of ironing out and wrinkling out bills in this first month before we get to the more official process?

-Yes.

I'll just add that I think usually sessions do start off pretty slow.

This might potentially be slower than some others, but definitely last session was very slow at the beginning.

A lot of that is actually a logistical thing.

You have legal staff that have to be drafting these bills, making sure they're constitutionally sound, so there's literally just a delay in writing.

You know, they have to work up probably 1,000 different bills, so it's easier to do the low-hanging fruit.

They also need to make sure they get the bills that are just individual legislators' personal bills out by a certain deadline, and then other bills are exempt from those deadlines so they can kind of push those off a bit.

You know, just generally the legislature is amazing at procrastinating, and sometimes the most important bills-- I just remember last session, the funding formula for education came out so late, like we're talking late in May, for redefining Nevada's education system.

So it's very rare that they have their act together this early, and what it really will come down to really the final few days to let all the pieces of the budget and the end game really come together.

Colton, I want to go to you here too because something that has come up is the bill related to Innovation Zones, something that seems like it should be one of those processes that is ironed out and one of the last things maybe to be introduced, as Michelle is talking about.

And yet we have Governor Sisolak that conducted a roundtable at the end of last week about the Innovation Zones, and it looks like this bill might be more forthcoming then towards the end of the session.

What do you think the strategy is there in bringing such a unique and landmark bill forward now?

-Well, I'm not sure they're necessarily going to bring the actual bill forward anytime soon.

I think with the bill kind of getting out there at the beginning of session, you know, at least publicly once it was reported on, I'm not necessarily sure that was in their plans, so I think this is them trying to get out ahead of it now.

And that roundtable itself was really just the governor kind of, you know, trying to show his support and he kind of talked about why he thinks it's important.

And then otherwise just him and GOED director Michael Brown and Jeremy Aguero from Applied Analysis just kind of going through the bill and talking about some of the perceived or the potential economic development benefits of it which were things that had already kind of been out there.

So to me it was just them kind of getting out and trying to get out in front of it now that the news stories have already been running.

And the news cycle maybe hasn't necessarily been very kind to the proposal in terms of some of the reactions, especially from some of the national tech coverage, national tech outlets.

They haven't been less than kind to the idea of letting or allowing big tech companies to effectively form their own local governments.

-So am I hearing that you think that the actual official proposal of that bill is not going to happen anytime soon?

We might see it at the end of the session, then?

-I think so.

I think there's a lot of details that are going to be ironed out in this, and I think the government mentioned this on Friday that there's a lot of details that are going to be discussed, you know, probably behind the scenes just between various stakeholders.

I mean, at this point where the big proposal for this would be for the first one, at least the first one of these with the blockchains, smart city idea now it being Storey County, now you have Storey County as of this week coming out formally opposed to letting an Innovation Zone be a separate government within their county.

So that's going to be kind of a stickler for the whole situation because now you have kind of the big county where we have a lot of these other tech companies like Tesla and Google and Switch are coming out just effectively opposed to the whole idea of this semi-autonomous, self-governing Innovation Zone.

-Michael, let's talk about some of the other big key areas that maybe we thought, we assumed, before the session started would be big areas that would get a lot of coverage.

Criminal justice of course at the top, something you have been covering yourself, but maybe other areas, too.

As we look into the future over the next month, what are some big-- are there other landmark bills out there that you think we will see?

-Absolutely.

I think bail reform is going to come back again this session.

Bail reform is a contentious topic in any state, and it's proven not to really go anywhere over the last couple of sessions.

In 2019 they were pushing a giant bail bill to try to fix just the bail process and the cash flow process, and they ended up turning it into a study bill.

So they studied that through the interim, through 2020, and had some good suggestions.

We're still waiting to see them materialize into actual proposed legislation, so we haven't seen that language yet.

I know that's going to be one big thing on the criminal justice side that's going to be a very contentious fight.

We're definitely going to see more housing and tenants' rights bills.

I mean, the COVID-19 pandemic has really underscored just how huge our housing crisis is.

We've always had a housing crisis.

If you look at all the data, looking at the lack of affordable housing and low-income housing, we ranked as a state and in Southern Nevada specifically just poorly in the creation of affordable housing and how that really burdens tenants and creates a lot of issues.

So I think COVID-19 really exacerbrated all those issues, so now we're going to see some bills that are going to address that.

Just Thursday morning, this morning, they had their first eviction bill hearing that looked at automatic record sealing for non-payment of rent that happened in the pandemic specifically.

That was already a contentious bill hearing, and it's the first one.

There was a lot of questions about if it just goes too far, if it takes away property owners' rights and abilities.

But there's a lot of hurt out there.

I mean, we have continued to see even with moratoriums on the federal and state level the rising numbers of people being evicted still.

There was a spike in eviction cases in November that was pretty staggering and pretty ridiculously high, so as a result I think we're going to see more eviction-related bills and tenant protections in general.

Like what Bert was saying, there is this whole notion that nothing that we do can actually have a fiscal note, so there's a lot of-- they're walking a very tight rope right now of what they can and cannot propose.

So I'm really curious to see some of those other housing bills and tenant protections, what all they will entail, because there's some language that you can fix, but what can you actually do if you're not going to get to invest in some of your protections too?

So I'm really curious what fights manifest out of those and what actual legislative and substantive solutions actually manifest this session.

-And as you mentioned, exacerbated by COVID but of course, tenants' rights and eviction reform are things that have been talked about and have been proposed for some time through our legislative session, so it will be interesting to see how those develop.

Michelle, I wanted to come to you.

Let's talk a little bit about some of the more under-the-radar bills, things that have already been proposed or things that are going to be proposed that might be a precursor or might have a large influence on our legislative session over the next couple months.

-I don't know if I would say it's under the radar, but I think election reform will be a significant topic.

Most of these bills haven't quite come up yet but, you know, they're trying to move Nevada from a primary-- or sorry, a caucus state to a primary state.

That would be a huge change.

You know, they're really hoping to get Nevada at the front of the line ahead of New Hampshire and Iowa.

So I think that will get a lot of attention when it actually does come up for discussion.

And then the bills trying to make permanent AB4, which is the controversial bill that expanded mail-in balloting and led to record numbers of people participating in this election, but it's also kind of in the crosshairs of Republicans who say it's vulnerable to fraud.

So yes, I think that's going to be, you know, just a huge discussion but the Democrats hold all the cards there.

It would just require a simple majority to make this policy something permanent, something that would not be only dependent on there being a pandemic.

You know, it could really change kind of the shape of the electorate in Nevada, really get a lot more people casting a ballot in any given election and, you know, that could have unknown consequences.

It didn't necessarily-- it wasn't a total wash in favor of the Democrats in the 2020 election, you know.

Republicans picked up three seats in the legislature so it's not always a Democrat victory tied to that.

But the Republicans are particularly concerned about that expansion.

-And have proposed a bill to eliminate mail-in ballots I know too.

Bert, we've got about a minute left.

Let's go to you too, either under-the-radar bills or is there bigger areas of legislation that you are looking to really track particularly over the next month?

-I've been really focused so far on AB116.

This is a bill that was introduced by Assemblywoman Rochelle Nguyen, and this would essentially decriminalize minor traffic violations.

The way that it works right now in Nevada is if you have something like a broken taillight for instance and you're given a citation that has a fee attached to it, if you're in a position where you cannot pay that fine, the courts will assess other fines in addition to the original one, and then it can also become a bench warrant.

It can actually become a criminal proceeding, so some folks are in a position now where they essentially have to decide between doing time in jail or finding the money to pay down traffic violations.

-I do want to make a really important note if I can, just the fact that it's not just on people's backs.

This is specifically on black and brown people and people of colors' back.

If you look at the data, this is happening in zip codes that are primarily black and brown and primarily low income.

We're balancing our courts and funding our courts on traffic tickets, minor things like driving without proof of insurance, on the backs of black and brown people which is really important.

We have lawmakers who are coming off of 2020 nationwide protests around racial justice that say they're committed to adjusting these issues.

Well, this is low-hanging fruit because you're seeing that black or brown people are getting ticketed and warrants out of minor infractions higher than any other population.

-And what do you hear from legislators, Michael and Bert both.

What are you hearing from legislators?

Does it look like something like this has success, is going to have success?

-I would say it will have a little bit more success than it did in 2019.

This came up in the 2019 session and passed out of the Assembly, I believe, if I remember correctly, and did not get a hearing in the Senate Judiciary.

But this year actually has more sponsors.

Both Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro and Speaker Frierson are primary sponsors on the bill, so that gives me reason to believe that it actually is going to go a little bit further this year.

-Well, thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

Now, for any of the resources that we've discussed on the show, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevada-week.

You can also always find us on social media at @nevadaweek.

Thanks again.

We'll see you next week.

♪♪♪