Las Vegas forum draws more ideas for state Legislature

Southern Nevada business and government leaders took a last chance to bend the ears of state lawmakers Friday, joining incoming and outgoing legislators for a final issues forum before the Feb. 2 start of the 2015 legislative session.

Representatives from UNLV, the Clark County School District and Regional Transportation Commission each gave lengthy pitches on laws they hope to see passed over the next four months.

The forum also gave state lawmakers a chance to preview some of their own legislative priorities, with tax breaks for drone companies and statewide mental health care reforms taking up prominent spots on the agenda.

The event, co-hosted by the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce, wasn’t a rundown of the chamber’s priorities, nor the inaugural meeting of any kind of Southern Nevada legislative caucus, but something in between.

Presenters from inside and outside the statehouse touched on 18 bill draft requests over the course of the two-hour forum, many of which came out of chamber-sponsored working groups that have met at several similar forums since the 2013 legislative session.

School district Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky led off the event with an impassioned plea for changes to the statewide K-12 education funding formula, one he said favored Northern Nevada students at the expense of their peers to the south.

“We need to look at our second language learners and students in poverty,” Skorkowsky said. “We have to support those changes with changes in the funding formula.”

Skorkowsky’s presentation kicked off a rundown of no less than six K-12 education-related bill draft requests, including one aimed at allowing districts to roll over school bonds without taking the issue back to voters.

Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison and Assemblywoman Irene Bustamante Adams, D-Las Vegas, led off a presentation on tax breaks for drone companies by explaining that the incentives would not apply to big airlines and could be rescinded from non-performing companies. They didn’t say exactly how much the state might offer Nevada-bound unmanned aviation industry entrepreneurs.

Next up was Assemblyman Tyrone Thompson, D-North Las Vegas, who introduced the forum to a handful of bill requests meant to streamline state business licensing practices and break up local health boards into separate regulatory and advisory panels composed of elected officials and health experts. Thompson hopes the move will add medical expertise to regulatory decisions made by board appointees.

Lobbyist George Ross and former Assemblyman Dr. Andy Eisen split a presentation on proposed reforms to state-run mental and behavioral health institutions, with each citing “extraordinary overcrowding” in local hospitals as one of many reasons to patch up the state’s mental health policies.

Eisen and Ross covered the outlines of a plan that would split up mental health responsibilities among three or four regional authorities. They hope to have legislators studying a transition plan for the proposal by 2017.

Both the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the College of Southern Nevada got in on the next presentation, offering effusive praise for efforts to bring a long-awaited medical school to Southern Nevada before hammering away at the need for a $6.5 million workforce grant fund to support higher education job training initiatives.

Tina Quigley, general manager of the Regional Transportation Commission, rounded out the forum with proposed tweaks to a fuel tax passed in 2013. Quigley hopes to change language set to appear on a ballot question when that tax goes up for renewal. She would also like to see legislation passed to protect Nevada highway funds from being used to balance the state’s books.

Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven.