Finding a place in the Legislature’s shark tank

Sunday, April 10, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Nevadans seem to pride themselves on holding government and politics at bay, starting with the fact that our legislature meets for only four months every other year. The lawmakers call themselves citizen legislators, meaning that while some of them are political animals who live and breathe government and its back rooms, others have ordinary jobs they set aside to do the people’s business every odd-numbered year.

Our legislative body is so minimalist, its rank-and-file members don’t have staffs other than receptionists when the legislature is in session. The Legislative Counsel Bureau does the heavy lifting to vet, draft and opine on bills being introduced. And in quintessential Nevada fashion, lobbyists not only pitch legislation but frequently help write the language.

We’re also a state with such easy access to lawmakers, a person in Clark County can come in off the street and sit down with three or four legislators between sessions to propose a new law or ask for money for one cause or another. It’s a town-hall sort of process that actually has a name: the Southern Nevada Forum. And it plays out a bit like that television reality show “Shark Tank,” in which wannabe entrepreneurs pitch their ideas and seek financing from well-heeled venture capitalists.

The forum was created after the 2013 Legislature to get a head start on the next one and to allow public agencies, businesses, schools and colleges, even individuals, to get ahead of the curve in making pitches to lawmakers. It is broken into a handful of committees: higher education, K-12 education, transportation, infrastructure, economic development and good governance. Each is co-chaired by legislative leaders from both houses, representing both parties.

Issues raised by the community are publicly discussed at these public meetings, which are sponsored by the city of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce. People or organizations that have a stake in particular subject areas can participate in the discussion and ultimately vote on which concerns should be prioritized. Legislators then push for those bills in the subsequent legislative session.

Ahead of the 2015 Legislature, for instance, overwhelming support for the construction of the UNLV School of Medicine was aired at the forum, which helped push Gov. Brian Sandoval to fully fund the school so it could start classes in fall 2017. The K-12 committee got behind the “Read by 3” campaign by the Clark County School District, which helped loosen money for literacy programs. And governance of the Southern Nevada Health District was simplified after local businesspeople groused that its oversized 14-member board of directors, with an equal number of alternativesm led to too many inconsistent decisions. The size of the board was whittled down in the 2015 legislative session, and an advisory board was added. The business community was happy.

Now all eyes are on the 2017 Legislature. At a recent meeting about infrastructure, a businessman asked lawmakers to fund the cost of bringing expensive infrastructure to large parcels of undeveloped land to promote economic growth. To promote economic development, a representative of the Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council asked the committee to support a bill proposal requiring that 25 percent of workers on any public works project be apprentices, a way to more quickly refill the pool of qualified construction laborers after the Great Recession.

The committees’ recommendations will be aired and prioritized during a public meeting of the full Southern Nevada Forum at 9 a.m. May 5 at the Stan Fulton Building at UNLV.

We know that politicians still will be politicians and wheel-and-deal behind closed doors. But we applaud the Southern Nevada Forum for bringing grass roots to the process of government.