Nevada's 300-Headed Bureaucratic Beast

Now, friends, let me tell you about a grand mess cooked up in the sagebrush state—a tale of boards, commissions, committees, councils, and more red tape than a Christmas morning at the Post Office.

Nevada, bless her bureaucratic heart, has over 300 state boards and commissions. Yup, three hundred!

That’s more boards than a lumber yard. These are all civilian-run outfits, supposedly here to help regulate barbers, boxers, opticians, and about every soul who wants a license to hang a shingle.

The state’s own Department of Business and Industry calls these boards a “de facto fourth branch of government.” If you ask me, three branches are already too many for the job most days.

Four? That’s just plain greedy.

Naturally, someone had the gumption to suggest we thin the herd. That someone is Governor Joe Lombardo, who says the system oughta be “smart, lean, and productive,” which is political shorthand for “We got too many folks doin’ not enough work.”

Enter SB78, a bill that tries to consolidate, prune, and bring some oversight to this overgrown jungle of regulation. But don’t go poppin’ your cork just yet. The bill barely crawled through its first test as Democrats on the committee couldn’t muster much enthusiasm—only one feller voted “yes,” and that was to “keep the conversation flowin’,” which is Capitol-speak for “this dog don’t hunt, but let’s see if it growls.”

Why all the pushback?

Well, it seems every one of these 300-odd boards has a choir of critics and defenders, not to mention lobbyists thicker than Nevada dust in July. Some worry the proposed consolidations will mix professionals like opticians and optometrists like peas and gravel—close in theory–but mighty different in practice.

One lady, head of the dispensing optician’s board, hollered that you can’t ask people trained in fitting glasses to regulate someone who performs eye surgery. Another warned that combining therapists, social workers, and gambling counselors would water everything down ‘til no one knew which way was up.

And while the state argues this cleanup act could save $15 million a year—no small pine nuts—the opposition claims it’s being rushed, poorly communicated, and mighty disrespectful to the expertise involved.

Now, here’s the kicker–most of these advisory boards, the ones that recommend things and don’t license a soul, aren’t even touched by this bill. That’s two-thirds of the whole pile, left right where they are, sittin’ pretty and makin’ suggestions like a peanut gallery with a printing budget.

So where does that leave us? Right where we started, more or less–too much government, too little accountability, and too many folks with fancy titles and no particular urgency to change a thing. Like molasses in January, reform in Nevada moves mighty slow—and sometimes not at all.

To sum up–300 boards is too many. It’s a government so tangled up it can’t find its feet.