Tuesday, April 2, 2019 | 2 a.m.
CARSON CITY — There’s probably a bill to fill, or thwart, most every desire currently going through the state Legislature.
For some issues, though, a bill won’t cut it. Larger, statutorily concrete changes sometimes require something a little beefier — an amendment to the Nevada Constitution.
And there’s a chance Nevadans will get a chance to weigh in on constitutional changes in the 2020 general election, depending on how the 2019 Legislature acts.
Here’s some of what residents may see on their ballot in 2020.
Senate Joint Resolution 1 – This amendment would reconstitute and redefine the job of the Nevada Board of Pardons Commissioners. It would require the board to be made up of the governor, all state Supreme Court justices and the attorney general. The board would meet quarterly and run on a majority vote system for any actions taken.
SJR 6 – This would increase the minimum wage for all workers to $9.40 an hour on Jan. 1, 2022, and further increase it by $1.15 every year until it reaches $14. If the federal government raises the minimum wage higher, then the state must match it.
Assembly Joint Resolution 2 – This would require the legal recognition of all marriages regardless of gender.
SJR 3 – This tackles voting rights, including provisions that set voter accessibility and a statewide standard for counting votes. It takes currently codified law and makes it part of the constitution.
AJR 14 – This would bar medical service providers from charging a rate higher than 150 percent of the lowest rate of what they agreed to accept from a federal public insurer for the service. This rate would be changeable under certain limited circumstances.
AJR 5 – This would authorize the Legislature to provide for the “governance, control and management” of the state university, rather than the Board of Regents.
SJR 14 – This would essentially reset the depreciation rates on property taxes. Owed property tax is determined through the value of the land and the improvements — houses, carports — on it, with a 1.5 percent depreciation rate every year up to 50 years. This amendment would reset that 1.5 percent rate upon the sale or transfer of property.
So how does the process of amending the state constitution work?
For an amendment to get on the ballot through the Legislature, it requires majority passage from in both chambers in successive legislative sessions, then it is placed on the ballot. Ratification comes with a majority vote by the electorate.
Michael Bowers, a professor of political science at UNLV, said Nevada’s process of passing amendments isn’t unusual.
In most states, the idea is that the state constitution is a more fundamental law document than mere statute and, therefore, should be more difficult to change,” he said. “This thinking, of course, is similar to what one finds in Article V of the U.S. Constitution, which outlines a process for amendment of that document only through extraordinary means.”
The process, he said, is rooted in the thought that amendments should require an extraordinary process to pass, and through wariness of government overreach, which Bowers says crops up multiple times in the Constitution.
There’s another way to amend the Nevada Constitution, though — ballot initiative.
A number of signatures equaling 10 percent of the number of voters in the most recent general election is required to qualify a proposed amendment on the ballot. The amendment must win a majority vote in two elections before it passes fully.
Bowers said increased awareness of the citizen initiative process has accelerated the number of amendments proposed.
Although the initiative process has been in the state constitution over a century, it is only in recent years that groups have gotten more sophisticated at funding professional signature gatherers and campaigning for approval, he said. “In its early years, the initiative process tended to be more informal and ad hoc and not the highly formal and organized process that it has become.”
Seeing an amendment on the ballot in Nevada isn’t rare.
There have been 12 amendments on the ballot in the last five general elections: Three in 2010, one in 2012, two in 2014, two in 2016 and four in 2018. Out of those, eight passed.
Bowers said that the changing political climate in Nevada could be contributing to the proposed changes in the constitution.
“Whereas Nevada was previously very lightly populated and rural, it has now become a state of 3 million people from a diversity of backgrounds and who live predominantly in urban areas,” he said. “As a result, the needs of the state have likewise changed and that results in moves to change the constitution. And, I would also note that many of the people who now live in Nevada have come from elsewhere and bring with them ideas for what state government and the state constitution should look like.”
