Gas, Taxes, and Nevada's Indexing Scheme

While not a learned legislator nor a prophet of petroleum, when the Nevada Legislature starts tinkering with gas taxes, a body can’t help but reach for its spectacles and squint suspiciously at the fine print.

As it happens, there’s a fresh bill — Assembly Bill 530, they call it — ambling through Carson City like a mule without a purpose. Bless its bureaucratic heart, the bill aims to keep the Clark County Fuel Revenue Indexing program alive and kickin’.

The good folk of Nevada already voted it in back in 2016, and unless this bill passes, they’ll get to vote on it again in 2026. Meanwhile, if Clark County commissioners can wrangle up a two-thirds majority, they might skip the whole messy business of democracy and extend it themselves.

Fuel Revenue Indexing — or FRI, for them fond of acronyms — is a clever little contraption that adjusts your gas taxes with the rise of inflation. That means every time your loaf of bread costs more, so does a gallon of gas.

Currently, there’s about $1.11 in tax per gallon. That’s right—for every gallon, 23 cents to the state, 18.4 cents to the feds, and a whoppin’ 70 cents to Clark County.

If gas were a cow, it’d be milked dry.

Presently, your average Nevadan is paying $3.99 a gallon, up 20 cents since last week, and if that ain’t enough to curdle your coffee, the industry folks say it’s due to a “seasonal blend shift,” which is Latin for “we can charge more, so we do.”

At the bill’s hearing, Democratic Assemblymember Howard Watts tried to sweeten the deal by pointing out all the good FRI has done—702 road projects, 20,400 jobs, and over 78 small businesses who owe their existence to this tax tweakin’ program.

If true, that’s more productivity than seen from the Legislature in two decades. But not everyone’s sold.

Jenine Hansen, representing Nevada State Families for Freedom, asked the room a question most politicians pretend not to hear, “Are we afraid of a vote by the people?” she asked.

It’s a dangerous question to ask a room full of folks whose job depends on occasionally ignoring just such votes.

If AB530 fails to pass, the matter returns to the hands of voters in 2026. Governor Joe Lombardo vetoed a similar attempt in 2023, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, voters ought to have a say in these things.

So here sits the average Nevadan wedged between the gas pump and the ballot box, wondering if the roads to progress are because of honest taxes or political shortcuts. Suggestion–take the train if it ever comes back.