Hope everyone had a good weekend, and by everyone I mean the Nevada state senate, which is set to reconvene today to pick up where it left off on Wednesday with its debates on the Las Vegas stadium bill for the Oakland A’s. There’s no set start time yet, and the likelihood is that they won’t restart until enough senators have haggled behind closed doors for amendments that’ll flip them to “yes” votes that the bill can pass, so if we do see them back in session today, it probably means that at least three senators have cut a deal. Top contenders for horse trading include eliminating the A’s exemption from the state live entertainment tax, which would save the state about $100 million, and putting more teeth in a community benefits agreement, which likely wouldn’t save much; this would still leave around $500 million in public money going into the deal, but it could be enough to turn three heads.
Even then, though, that would just move things along to the state assembly, where speaker Steve Yeager said last week that he had no intention of voting on a stadium bill in special session. On Saturday, though, he posted a long Twitter thread elaborating on that:
https://twitter.com/SteveYeagerNV/status/1667591343747764224
The drive from Las Vegas to Carson City is 7 hours. The flight from Las Vegas to Reno is about an hour and then you have to drive about 30 minutes down to Carson City. Air service between Las Vegas and Reno has been atrocious this session, with constant delays/cancellations.
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
It is hard to describe what the end of a legislative session is like. They are always busy because certain budget bills have to be passed before others can be considered. But suffice it to say that many of us, including staff, were working 18-20 hours days for the last few weeks.
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
The Governor does not usually call a special session right as a regular session ends unless something critical doesn't pass in the regular session. This year, that happened, when Senate Republicans all voted no on a critical bill that had been agreed upon: https://t.co/U5bTHrI87I
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
The next day, the Governor called a special session to make good on the agreement that had been struck relating to the the last remaining budget bill: https://t.co/0hPjjWZ3vv
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
The day after the regular (82nd) session adjourned, the Senate Majority Leader and I met with the Governor. Contrary to what he had told me the night before, he indicated that he was going to call a second special session related to the A's: https://t.co/qmgQqkaNsE
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
The sudden sense of urgency was surprising because there seemed to be no sense of urgency about this during the regular session. Indeed, the original A's legislation, #AB509, wasn't introduced until May 26th, with just 10 days left in the 120 day session.
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
Although we heard #SB509 in a joint session a few days after it was introduced, the end of session sprint did not allow for a thorough vetting. In addition, we made clear that we could not seriously consider it until we had the budget locked in: https://t.co/x5Jr33X2tb
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
The redo of that budget bill ultimately didn't get signed until the very last night of the regular session, a few hours before midnight, which obviously left no time for consideration of #SB509, which we said time and time again would not be a "ram and jam."
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
Disregarding our advice to wait on calling a special session, the Governor called it anyway. Normally special sessions for policy issues are coordinated in terms of scheduling & there is a general consensus that folks are likely to be supportive of the contemplated legislation.
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
And rather than continue to burn legislators and staff out, we decided to give everybody the weekend to rest and reset. That doesn't mean conversations have ceased happening. It just means we aren't requiring everyone to be in the legislative building in Carson City.
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
One last thing. If you are going to come at me with the "we will vote you out if you pass this" – please save yourself the time if you don't live in Nevada. Or if you don't live in my district. Fewer than a dozen of my 75,000 actual constituents have weighed in on this issue.
— Steve Yeager (@SteveYeagerNV) June 10, 2023
So Yeager is 1) steamed about how this all went down but 2) willing to discuss the stadium bill but 3) not going to ram it through without debate but 4) trying to avoid being distracted by the “noise.” That is a more difficult set of tea leaves to read, especially given that while the Democrats in control of the legislature may hate Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, they’re more amenable to the construction unions that are lobbying hard in favor of the project, and reportedly threatening to run primary challengers against anyone who votes against it. Many, many balls still in the air on this one — keep an eye on the legislature’s YouTube page and Nevada Independent reporter Tabitha Mueller’s Twitter for further updates, though I’ll likely post some on here as well if anything especially noteworthy happens later today.
Oh, this is just a show, isn’t it? It’s going to pass and everyone is grandstanding their way to that point. Sigh.
Possibly! Or maybe it’s just a show of actually considering the bill, and everyone will let it die and then blame the other party for its failure. Or many legislators may actually still be undecided. As noted, tea leaves hazy, ask again later.
Do we have an instance where a legislature said no to a subsidy that would bring a major league team? I’m Charlie Brown trying to kick the football here.
It usually just never comes to a vote if there isn’t support, and the number of proposed relocations is very low as well, so it’s not going to be much of a sample size, but I can check. Are you counting city councils voting it down, or just state legislatures?
Why would the construction unions be so gung-ho over this project, as opposed to any other project that wouldn’t be looking for hundreds of millions of dollars of public money?
Follow the link: “Unions don’t favor the A’s stadium because the stadium will bring lots of union jobs–it won’t, stadiums are terrible job creators–they support it because backing the pro-stadium local growth coalition of insiders will benefit them on other projects.”
Nothing matters. Everything is for sale.
Do we have any idea as to how long legislative leaders are willing to consider this bill before saying they’re done? Are we talking a few days or a few weeks? Based on the Assembly Speaker’s thread, it doesn’t sound like they have unlimited time to keep debating this bill. The Governor can’t just keep them there until the deal passes, so I’m wondering when or what the breaking point is where legislative leaders say they’re done and adjourn.
Looking at the raw number of days without context it looks like most Special Nevada Legislative sessions since 1985 typically last a week or less. There are are two outliers that lasted almost a month the 20th and 21st Special sessions.
I’m guessing the special session will be over in 1-2 weeks at most. I can’t imagine there is going to be much of an appetitive for supporters or opposition voters to see this drag out.
https://www.leg.state.nv.us/session/
The Nevada Independent has more information on Special Sessions.
“Special legislative sessions are typically limited to no more than 20 days”
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/lombardo-to-convene-special-session-to-consider-failed-budget-bill
Thanks!