Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

special session:

Republicans block mining tax increase in Nevada Senate

Nevada Legislature Special Session, Day Seven

The Nevada Legislature on the seventh day of the 31st Special Session in Carson City, Nev., on Tuesday, July 14, 2020. (David Calvert/Nevada Independent, pool)

Updated Friday, July 17, 2020 | 6 a.m.

CARSON CITY — The Nevada Senate fell one vote short early this morning in an attempt to pass a measure generating new revenue for the first time in the ongoing legislative special session.

Senate Republican balked at backing the measure, which would have put a 60% cap on deductions for mining taxes and provided about $100 million in new revenue to the state general fund. Because the legislation would have increased taxes, a two-thirds majority of the Senate was required for passage. Democrats lack a supermajority in the chamber by one vote.

Late Thursday, the Assembly approved the measure on a party line vote. Democrats outnumber Republicans 29-13 in that chamber, one more than the two-thirds requirement.

Republicans in both chambers, criticized the speed with which the bill was introduced and passed through the Assembly, stating they had first seen the bill around 4:30 p.m.

In the Senate, Minority Leader James Settelmeyer, R-Gardnerville, said he was “bothered” by the bill, that it was brought up too quickly and with too little input from the mining industry.

“Wholesale, just taking a percentage away from them, on something that they have not looked at and have actually started businesses and new mines based on the rule that it was, it’s not fair, it’s not right, especially in the middle of the pandemic,” Settelmeyer said.

Tyre Gray, president of the Nevada Mining Association, said he first saw the bill around 3:15 p.m. and noted his industry's opposition.

Sen. James Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas, supported the bill, and said lawmakers were making decisions in unprecedented times.

”When we concluded the general session last year I don’t think any of us expected a global pandemic to hit our state, our nation and our country,” he said. “I don’t think any of us expected to see tourism suffer the way it has and to see all the vital services that our constituents rely on suffer so greatly.”

The proposal was the first new revenue generating plan announced in the ongoing session called to fill a $1.2 billion budget shortfall from the economic crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic.

On the Senate side, some Republicans took to Twitter to voice complaints before the bill was brought to the chamber floor shortly before midnight.

“I’m getting hundreds of emails and messages suggesting (the bill) adds money to education coffers. I see no such language in (the bill),” Sen. Keith Pickard, R-Henderson, said on Twitter. “Who made this promise to teachers?”

Education advocates, long pushing for additional revenue for Nevada’s K-12 education system, testified in favor of the bill.

During the bill’s hearing in the Assembly, Marie Neisess, president-elect of the Clark County Education Association teacher’s union, applauded lawmakers for bringing the bill forward and said they should look for more revenue sources in the 2021 legislative session.

“Now, more than ever, we expect our elected officials to stand up and lead,” Neisess said.

Gov. Steve Sisolak, who has left plans for any new revenue up to the Legislature, said in a statement that he favored the bill and would have signed it had it passed through the legislature.

“This bill would generate desperately needed revenue and reduce the magnitude of devastation this pandemic has inflicted on Nevada, all without adding an additional financial burden on small businesses and families,” Sisolak said in a statement.

Sisolak, in the statement, said mining had not “suffered the same devastating impacts as other sectors of our economy.”

“The point is that we are all in a pretty dire situation in terms of the state and our economy, and I think it’s about time that we have everybody step up,” Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, said. “And that’s not say that we’re trying to say anything necessarily negative about mining, it’s just that when there are times where we know that folks can pay some and we can restore services and we can talk about things about investing in education, I think that’s been a priority for the Senate, a priority for me, a priority of our members since day one.”

Data released from the Legislative Counsel Bureau showed that, if the deductions had been in place in 2019, the total tax amount collected from mining would have been $217.1 million instead of $113.6 million.

Cannizzaro pushed back against Republican arguments that the bill came forward quickly, stating that bills are introduced “at all hours of the night” in almost all legislative sessions. The budget hole, she said, has been at the forefront of legislative work for the entirety of the special session and prior.

“The hole in the budget has been a topic of conversation for at least the last month, and ways in which to address that problem have had to be at the forefront of everyone sitting in this body’s mind or I’m not really sure what we’re doing here,” she said.