Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

The Legislature:

Affordable housing, felony voting measures survive legislative deadline

Bernstein Children's Rights Program

Jason Frierson, Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, was confirmed Wednesday as U.S. Attorney in Las Vegas, Nevada’s top federal prosecutor.

CARSON CITY — State lawmakers crossed the second house passage deadline on Friday, triggering another marathon day of hearings in which some bills lived, and some died.

With a week left until the final house passage deadline — except for some bills with exemptions — here’s some of the larger bills that survived the Friday deadline.

Right to vote for felons

Assembly Bill 431, sponsored by Speaker Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas, would return the right to vote to certain disenfranchised felons.

Currently, first-time felons with a nonviolent record are reenfranchised at the time of their release of the end of their probation or parole. Second-time felons and felons with a violent record must have their right to vote restored by a court.

Frierson’s bill would restore the right to vote to anyone who is not currently incarcerated.

Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., currently restore the eligibility to vote immediately upon release. Maine and Vermont allow incarcerated people to vote.

Ban on private prisons

Assembly Bill 183, backed by a large group of Democratic lawmakers, would bar the state from contracting with private prisons.

Nevada has no private prisons within the state, but does contract with out-of-state prisons to house some Nevada prisoners.

The bill would allow the state to enter into out-of-state agreements with private prisons until June 30, 2022. The Department of Corrections has estimated a $5.33 million fiscal impact starting in fiscal year 2015 through fiscal year 2016.

Water mitigation plans

Assembly Bill 30, which would allow the state engineer’s office to create mitigation plans when water is requested in an area where there is none left to appropriate, passed through the Senate Committee on Natural Resources without recommendation. The hearing was short.

As of now, any request for water at a site where there is no unappropriated water available must be denied by the state engineer’s office, who has the final say in water conflicts.

The bill is controversial with environmental groups, including the Great Basin Water Network and The Nature Conservancy, who see the use of water under the bill as potentially damaging to Nevada, the driest state in the country.

Local control of affordable housing measures

Senate Bill 398, sponsored by Sen. Julia Ratti, D-Sparks, would give more power to local governments in enacting measures that would help with the affordable housing crunch in Nevada.

Opponents of the bill in the past have raised concerns this would enable cities to enact rent control, while the bill’s proponents say that it gives no power to local governments that they do not already have.

The bill’s text essentially allows developers to pay the city a fee to get around affordable housing “obligations” put in place by a municipality. For example, affordable housing mandates or inclusionary zoning practices which require developers to dedicate part of their construction to low-or-moderate-income residents.

“It’s my understanding that this language now is something (local governments) can do already,” Assemblyman Edgar Flores, D-Las Vegas, said. “We’ve had our legal (team), in fact, give an opinion on that, and they thought that they could do this already, so while I’ve been consistently against home rule, I think this is something they can do now and this is just clarifying language.

Lawmakers have another week to get most bills through their second house passage and to the governor's desk. Bills with exemptions, such as the education funding formula bill released later in the session, will have longer, but the session ends in a little over two weeks.