April 9, 2021
We have made it to the end of the 10th week with 53 days left to go in the Nevada Legislative Session! This is a special week because it was the first committee passage deadline which means that if a bill did not make it through, then it is dead and will no longer be considered.
The bills that did make it through to being heard this week were: AB376, SB346, and AB449. AB376 by Assemblywoman Torez is the Nevada Working Act. This bill aims to make sure local law enforcement is not doing the job of ICE. This essentially means they are not deporting people. A man that had lived in Northern Nevada for over 30 years was pulled over for a routine traffic violation and was deported. Faith in Action Nevada did our best to bring attention to this case and try to prevent his deportation, but unfortunately we were unable to stop it. The passing of this bill will keep this from happening again in the future.
SB346 from Senator Neil deals with digital goods and Nevada’s budget. As it currently stands, Nevada has a severe lack of revenue which is causing schools, healthcare, and mental health services to be underfunded. We are lowest in the nation for funding public schools. This bill will add a sales tax to digital goods like e-books and music which will create revenue that we can use to fund these services. When our original tax code was written, these online goods did not even exist, so they could not be factored into our revenue. This bill will help bring Nevada’s tax structure up to date.
AB449 deals with the Governor Office of Economic Development. This bill would improve the state’s business incentives and abatements on sales and use taxes, property taxes and payroll taxes to businesses that meet certain capital investment, job creation or minimum hourly wage targets. It would generate more funding for affordable housing by requiring that businesses receiving tax incentives make payments into a state fund for affordable housing. Specifically, it would look at how many of their employees are receiving medicaid and take this into consideration before giving out tax abatements. Then 10% of that amount is deposited into affordable housing. This is important because we are experiencing the Tesla Effect, which means housing across the board is increasing in price significantly due to all the business and corporations that are setting up shop here. This bill would contribute to making housing more affordable.
This upcoming week on April 20th is the first house bill passage deadline. All the assembly members will be voting on bills. The priority of the legislative session will be to have floor sessions and vote on bills. However, there is the possibility for exceptions to deadlines called waivers. In order to get a waiver, the Speaker of the Assembly and the Majority Leader of the Senate must agree that a bill has not been fleshed out enough, that its an important bill that needs more time, or if its a bill that has not been introduced and needs more time.
A bill that has received a waiver this time around is AJR1* which had been previously introduced last summer during a special session. It looks to change the constitutionally capped rates of 5% of net proceeds on mines to 7.75% on gross proceeds. This has the potential to bring in a significant amount of money to the state budget to fund public services. This bill will jump start more revenue.
Remember to help us support these bills mentioned by going to this website. You can also join our Digital Activation Team or Rapid Response Team to help us out even more. All the information is on our website along with all our Legislative priorities which are now available for you to look over here. Together we can help change Nevada for the better!