Nevada Lawmakers Stare Down the Clock

As Federal Fireworks Getting Lit

Now, I don’t aim to sound dramatic—though I often succeed when I try—but you might say Nevada’s statehouse is about to turn into a regular bee swarm come Monday morning. Over a hundred bills are gettin’ stacked like cordwood on the desks of lawmakers in the Assembly and Senate, with every last one hollering for attention before the big deadline hits Tuesday. It’s a mad dash, a legislative stampede, and I reckon you’d have to return to the silver rush to see such elbow-throwing determination in the West.

As all things governmental tend to be, the process is as tangled as a cat in a knitting basket. A bill born in the assembly must crawl out of committee like a wet possum, get a nod from the floor, and then make its way over to the Senate, where the same gauntlet awaits.

Should it survive that, it’ll find itself on the governor’s desk, hoping for a friendly signature. If it was born in the Senate, the whole journey’s the same—just in reverse, like a man backing out of a saloon at closing time.

Of course, budget bills and those sweet nothings whispered into law by Governor Joe Lombardo himself are exempt from these deadlines. That’s the political version of holding a golden ticket—nobody tells the Governor’s bills to wait their turn.

The 83rd session of this peculiar experiment we call the Nevada Legislature is due to wrap on June 2. And when it does, you best believe the curtain will rise on an even grander spectacle–the federal political season.

If you thought state politics was wild and woolly, wait till the campaign wagons start rolling and the banners start flying. We’ll trade dusty floor debates for national mudslinging, local posturing for presidential peacocking, and legislative wrangling for the full-blown traveling circus of American elections.

So, button up your coat and hang on to your hat—the state’s winding down, but the nation’s just getting started, and it’s fixing to be a raucous ride.