U.S. Sen. Harry Reid lambasted the Nevada Public Utilities Commission this week, accusing the energy regulators of trying to scuttle a bill before the state Legislature that would require NV Energy to stop using coal to produce electricity.
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid said Tuesday he was surprised he wasn’t called to testify in the trial of former lobbyist and real estate mogul Harvey Whittemore, who is accused of illegally funneling $133,000 in contributions to Reid’s 2010 campaign.
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid today renewed his threat to go after filibuster rules that have hindered President Barack Obama’s cabinet appointments, but don’t expect him to back eliminating the filibuster when it comes to legislation.
The Nevada Tax Commission signed off on a $233 million settlement with the state's largest casino resorts to free them from paying sales taxes on the comped meals they provide their patrons and employees in exchange for the resorts dropping their lawsuit seeking a refund on back taxes they've already paid.
The Nevada Tax Commission has called a special meeting Tuesday to review a last minute deal to settle a $350 million tax dispute on whether casinos should pay taxes on the free meals they give their employees and patrons.
In a party line vote following an emotional floor debate, the Nevada Senate today passed a measure that would expand background check requirements to private party firearm sales.
A measure that would require Nevada's largest electricity provider to accelerate the closure of its coal-fired power plants and launch massive new construction projects to replace the coal plants with renewable energy and natural gas passed the Nevada Senate unanimously today.
If there’s one promise Democrats have kept so far this session, it’s to have a discussion about taxes. But with the majority party’s capitulation on the Senate floor Tuesday that their payroll tax hike proposal is dead, it appears that discussion is all it’s going to be.
Running up against the reality of a powerful Republican minority, Senate Democrats on Tuesday gave up on their push for new taxes to fund education programs they've argued all session are critical to fund.
Moments after a cadre of gun control advocates who lost family members in mass shootings arrived in Carson City, the Senate Finance Committee passed SB 211 in a party line vote. It now heads to the Senate floor, where it almost certainly will face a pitched partisan battle.
Democrats may have fallen short of crafting a comprehensive tax reform plan to address Nevada’s wobbly revenue structure, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a bevy bills to raise taxes floating around the Legislature this year.
Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and California Gov. Jerry Brown have reached an agreement to keep the two states in a decades old compact to protect the environment around Lake Tahoe, agreeing to ease some barriers for development and mollifying the concerns of some environmentalists.
Democratic lawmakers showed little restraint when opponents of Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick’s admissions tax took to the microphone Tuesday to beg for exemptions to the 8 percent levy she wants to assess on nearly all forms of recreation.
Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas, is expected to take critics head on today at the first public hearing of her proposed entertainment and admissions tax, an 8 percent levy on everything from concerts and sporting events to gym memberships and strip clubs. Chief among them is the Electric Daisy Carnival, the massive outdoor music festival that draws an estimated 345,000 attendees to Las Vegas each summer.
When Senate Democrats on Monday released details of a tax increase they say is needed to adequately fund education, they swung a partisan hammer that shattered the patina of cooperation that had dominated this legislative session.
Responding to critics, Senate Majority Leader Mo Denis has amended his construction material recycling bill to protect smaller centers that could have been put out of business by the original version of his proposed legislation.
Nevada Democrats sent a blast email to supporters with headline "Help us help Nicolas Cage!" in an attempt to garner support for a tax incentive for movie production in Nevada.
On Wednesday, Kirkpatrick released a sweeping entertainment and admissions tax proposal — the centerpiece of her effort to clean up a Nevada tax code rife with exemptions and haphazardly applied interpretations.
Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas, today introduced a long-awaited measure to implement a new entertainment tax on everything from movies to strip clubs.
Movie star Nicolas Cage traveled to Carson City today to urge state lawmakers to pass a movie tax incentive bill, promising to use his connections in the industry to help spark a filmmaking boom in Nevada if the measure becomes law. “My name is Nicolas Cage, and I’m an American filmmaker,” Cage told lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee, who put away their laptops and phones to listen to his testimony.
The tax-pledge-signing, Tea Party-espousing, anti-tax Republican crusader appears to be a dying breed in the Nevada Legislature, though some hope to halt its decline. One politician says Republicans these days try to take a more nuanced approach to fiscal policy.
Casino mogul Steve Wynn met with legislative leaders today to "share insight" into what he called a slow recovery of the gaming industry at a time the Legislature is poised to consider new taxes.
A review of 1,500 cases of busing a discharged psychiatric patient out of state has resulted in additional disciplinary action and employee terminations at the state psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas.
Senate Majority Leader Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, has authored two bills — Senate Bills 315 and 316 — that would directly benefit the company that employed him up until the start of the legislative session this year.
Six Senate Republicans today unveiled their plan to double the net proceeds on minerals tax, a proposal, that if approved by voters, would net an estimated $600 million that would be earmarked for education.
Tuesday was a big day for scores of bills in the Nevada Legislature — a day when measures died or traveled to the opposite house, where they may encounter more hostile territory for their second round of hearings.
Senate Minority Leader Michael Roberson plans to unveil the details of a mining tax proposal he hopes to put on the ballot as an alternative to the margins tax initiative.
In his first official reaction to an ongoing investigation into whether the state's psychiatric hospital is routinely busing mentally ill patients out of state, Gov. Brian Sandoval said his administration took immediate action to address the situation, but downplayed any suggestion the state has a systemic problem on its hands.
With just 41 days left in the legislative session, Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas, said any effort to pass a services tax is finished and sounded less than optimistic about the chances of any kind of broad-based business tax making it to a vote.
Following more than an hour of a riveting, emotional and personal floor debate, the Nevada Senate voted 12-9 to start the process of repealing the gay marriage ban from the state constitution.
Since a mentally ill man from Las Vegas turned up in Sacramento on a Greyhound bus earlier this year, the state’s health department has disciplined employees involved in the man’s release, changed hospital policy and asked for a federal review of their practices.
NV Energy’s powerful lobbying corps has quietly tried to muster wide support for a major energy proposal at the Legislature, but the choreographed show it hoped to premiere to legislators didn’t go quite as planned.
Gov. Brian Sandoval's general counsel and policy director Lucas Foletta resigned today. He is the latest in a string of top staff departures from Sandoval's office.
Lobbyist Steve Robinson is a Nevada appointee to the Tahoe Regional Protection Agency board. He also works for the lobbying firm hired to pass legislation that could end up abolishing the agency altogether.
Maybe it was the procedural hijinks that redirected a priority bill to a friendly committee. Maybe it was when he plopped a surprise mining tax proposal in the laps of lawmakers; Senate Minority Leader Michael Roberson has been a thorn in the side of the Democratic majority since the start of the legislative session.
For most embroiled in the thick of the ongoing legislative session in the capital, Thursday was a day to celebrate. The halfway point. Day 60. The light at the end of the 120-day tunnel is that much nearer. (Well, we hope, anyway. Voters did happen to give lawmakers the power to call themselves into special session, so who knows.) At the halfway point, bills are slowly winding their way through the process, with the bulk of the work still remaining in the committees assigned to give legislation a first work through.
Nevada’s biggest gaming companies went to the Legislature on Wednesday to ask lawmakers to protect them from strip mall slot machine parlors and barroom sports betting kiosks.
On his first trip back to the Nevada Legislature since being elected to Congress, U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford urged state lawmakers to better fund education and social services so Nevada can take full advantage of available federal money.
Former Assemblyman Steven Brooks “intended to harm no one,” even as he publicly spiraled out of control and everyone failed to help him, his mother told Las Vegas journalist Jon Ralston in an interview Monday evening.
The Las Vegas constable’s office is not needed, its duties can be handled by other agencies and the current officeholder is a source of seemingly unending “difficulties” for Clark County, Sen. Michael Roberson told a legislative panel.
Las Vegas water czar Pat Mulroy foretold financial calamity for the Southern Nevada Water Authority should lawmakers decide to hand rate-making oversight to the state Public Utilities Commission.
One word can no longer be used to describe the Nevada Legislature ousting one of its members: Unprecedented. But what kind of a precedent did lawmakers set with the expulsion of former Assemblyman Steven Brooks, D-North Las Vegas? Although the mechanics of the process were transparent, the evidence and the reasons for determining Brooks should be expelled were not.
Through gut-wrenching tears Nevada lawmakers brought a conclusion to the at-times frightening saga that has gripped the Nevada Legislature for two months, voting Thursday to oust one of their own.
Fourteen Nevada news agencies, including the Sun, have filed a public records request seeking access to the report used as evidence to expel Assemblyman Steven Brooks, D-North Las Vegas, from the Nevada Legislature.
In a voice vote masking how each individual lawmaker sided, the Nevada Assembly made the unprecedented decision to expel one of their own — troubled Assemblyman Steven Brooks, D-North Las Vegas.
Assembly Democrats continued to struggle late Wednesday with making an unprecedented decision on whether to oust fellow Democratic lawmaker Assemblyman Steven Brooks, delaying for at least a day a formal vote on the recommendation to expel him from the Legislature.
Assembly Minority Leader Pat Hickey, R-Reno, called on Democratic leaders to provide more details on the evidence used to support the Select Committee's decision to recommend troubled Assemblyman Steven Brooks be expelled from the Legislature.
A bipartisan committee of lawmakers voted Tuesday to recommend troubled Assemblyman Steven Brooks be expelled from the Legislature. After meeting for nearly three hours behind closed doors, the somber legislators voted 6-to-1 to recommend expulsion.