Lance Iversen / AP
Spectators look down on the Nevada Assembly on the opening day of the legislative session, Monday, Feb. 6, 2017 in Carson City.
Saturday, April 22, 2017 | 2 a.m.
CARSON CITY — Lawmakers have until Tuesday to get their bills past their first floor votes, a deadline that will keep the Legislature open long after dark next week.
Senate Majority Leader Aaron Ford told senators to be prepared to go to midnight Monday to get the work done. The Senate is scheduled to start at 10 a.m., an hour earlier than usual on Monday.
Democrats will continue pushing their so-called Blueprint bills through the Legislature, while Republicans work to protect policies passed during the 2015 session.
An April 14 committee deadline has already whittled down the list of bills, with a measure abolishing the death penalty and another allowing traffic stops for seat belt violations among the pieces of legislation that failed to go forward.
Ford and Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson told reporters Friday that many of the Democrats’ priority bills are moving through the process, with a full policy picture forming after Tuesday.
Frierson said the April 14 deadline allowed lawmakers to weed out some bills that maybe were great ideas but didn’t take shape. One Democrat-backed measure that isn’t moving forward is a bill that would have given state political parties the option of using primaries rather than caucuses when picking a candidate for president.
Democrats’ priorities include measures that put certain Affordable Care Act provisions into state law, such as bills that allow women access to 12-month supplies of contraceptives, Frierson said. Republican efforts in Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare have been unsuccessful so far.
“We are still committed to creating a structure in Nevada that provides that health care regardless of what happens in D.C.,” Frierson said. “Certainly our hope is to make sure that we’re ready for any changes that come down from D.C.”
Gov. Brian Sandoval has veto power when bills get to his desk, and Assembly Minority Leader Paul Anderson said bills that scrap 2015 reforms face a challenge even if they pass the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
Anderson said there has been an effort to get Republican support on some Democrat-backed bills, such as a measure banning hydraulic fracturing in Nevada. That measure, Assembly Bill 159, is eligible for a deadline exemption.
A piece of 2015 legislation allowed certain public schools to be turned into achievement charter schools, and several bills introduced this session targeted the new system. Two bills, one to repeal and another to delay the policy, failed to make it past an April 14 committee deadline, while the third, Senate Bill 430, has secured an exemption.
“Repeal is certainly not an option,” Anderson said, noting that there are some improvements that could be made to the policy.
“Those were key reforms that were put in place to make sure that we see outcomes, and if we haven’t seen the outcomes, there’s no sense in repealing those yet,” Anderson said.
Sun reporter Cy Ryan contributed to this report.
