The Nevada Supreme Court is considering language a teachers union-backed PAC needs to include in a potential ballot referendum that could overturn the public financing deal for a Las Vegas baseball stadium that would house the relocated Oakland A's.

Major League Baseball owners unanimously approved the relocation to of the Oakland A's to Las Vegas in a planned $1.5 billion stadium on the Strip.

The commissioner of baseball expressed concern over a ballot question that could remove the public financing package from the A's stadium project in Las Vegas.

A PAC formed by a statewide teachers union has filed a referendum petition to block $380 million in public funding for the A's proposed stadium.

SB231 — sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) and Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) and co-sponsored by 34 other Democrats — would set aside $250 million from the state’s general fund, not the K-12 budget, to increase pay for licensed educators and paraprofessionals.

The increase has become central to both legislative Democrats and Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo as each has jockeyed to take credit for efforts to improve the state’s public schools.

In the wake of Gov. Joe Lombardo’s State of the State speech, Democrats — who still control both legislative chambers — were quick to criticize the partisan elements of the address, even as they signaled they may support some funding priorities on bipartisan grounds. 

CCEA members filed the lawsuit in late December, asking the court to block Cegavske’s proposed actions and asserting that she had “no discretion under law to refuse to permit Petitioners to withdraw their respective initiative petitions.”

In the last installment of our legislative "Follow the Money" series for 2021, we break down more than $2.8 million in legislative campaign spending from more than a dozen major industries.

Faculty across the state’s higher education system are pushing for a new law this year that would expand the state’s nascent public collective bargaining infrastructure to include professors and other professional staff — a sharp break from years of control of the bargaining process by the Nevada System of Higher Education itself.

The Board of Examiners on Tuesday will consider approving three $200,000 contracts for companies that could play a key role in implementing the state’s new education funding formula.

The amendment to SB543 removes a “maintenance of effort” requirement that education funding keep up with both enrollment growth and inflation unless there’s an economic downturn. Instead, it calls for funding “to the extent practicable,” giving the governor wide latitude to adjust the funding levels in the budget as he or she sees fit.

Select education, business and political leaders who attended private briefings this week about the long-awaited bill to modernize the state’s K-12 funding formula had mixed reactions about the plan, with some saying it looks promising and others going so far as to suggest it would be “devastating” to some rural school districts.

The collected data offers a picture, though, of how the most powerful and well-connected industries in Nevada — gaming, energy and organized labor — contribute to campaigns and offers a glimpse at how legislative campaigns are funded and operate. It also lends useful context as the 120-day Legislature gets underway, and lawmakers face pressure and requests from the very same businesses and entities that helped fund their campaigns.

Sisolak, who defeated Republican Adam Laxalt in the November election and will be sworn in next month as the state’s first Democratic governor in 20 years, kept a packed schedule through most of the year, ranging from meetings with gaming executives, business leaders, top lobbyists and other candidates for office, along with debate prep, campaign events and nearly three dozen fundraisers in addition to his normal county business.