Democratic legislative leaders reached a deal with Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo that will avert a budget crisis, as Lombardo signed two major budget bills and a pair of high-profile school safety measures last week.
The bill signings follow days of heated negotiations after Lombardo threatened multiple times to veto the state’s budget bills as his legislative priorities remained stalled. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders said they would not advance several high-profile policy bills, including a proposed stadium deal for the Oakland A’s, without a finalized budget.
The two budget measures include SB503, the K-12 education funding bill, which distributes more than $11.2 billion to the state’s K-12 funding formula in a historic $2 billion increase to education spending, and SB504, which primarily authorizes the spending of billions of dollars in federal funds, including a record $10.8 billion for Nevada Medicaid.
Lombardo was required to act on those two bills by the end of last Wednesday. Without his signature or veto, they would have automatically become law.
At a press conference following the bill signing, Lombardo repeated an earlier statement that his school safety measure was a “hill to die for.”
“I think it's that important to the people of Nevada, to the parents of Nevada, to the kids of Nevada and for your governor, myself, for the success of our education system moving forward” he said.
Sources close to Democratic legislative leadership indicated that key to the deal Wednesday night was a compromise on a pair of school discipline bills — one backed by Democrats and another sponsored by Lombardo’s office. Both bills substantially overhaul the state’s restorative justice law and make it easier for teachers and administrators to suspend or expel disruptive or violent students under certain circumstances.
Under the new compromise, both bills were passed out of the Senate late Wednesday in 20-1 votes, with amendments concurred in the Assembly and quickly transmitted to Lombardo for signature. Though both bills were amended, new provisions added to Democrat-sponsored AB285 reflect Lombardo’s demands for more stringent suspension and expulsion requirements for students who committed battery against school staff with intent to cause bodily harm.
How we got here
SB504, also called the Authorizations Act, passed with unanimous approval in the Senate and Assembly, while the education funding bill moved forward on a party-line vote in both chambers, with Republicans voicing concerns about the potential for the state to dive off a “fiscal cliff” by budgeting one-time money for ongoing expenses.
Ahead of the vote on the K-12 education bill, Sen. Heidi Seevers Gansert (R-Reno) praised the $2 billion investment in education but warned about the dangers presented by using one-shot funds, calling the budget “not structurally sound.”
Earlier this month, Democrats had sought to pressure Lombardo’s office into abandoning his bill, AB330, ahead of a key bill deadline and instead amend his favored provisions into their bill, AB285, sponsored by Assemblywoman Angie Taylor (D-Reno). Days later, Lombardo threatened to veto AB285 without “significant” changes.
But after the governor initially threatened to veto the Democrat-backed budget if his priorities, including school safety, were not addressed, legislative leaders granted the bill a retroactive waiver to keep it alive before passing both measures out on Wednesday.
The education funding bill has for weeks been at the center of disputes between leading Democrats, minority Republicans and Lombardo’s office, even as politicians from both parties have sought to take credit for a record $2 billion increase, a bump of 26 percent in per-pupil funding.
That increase, itself fueled by record tax revenues, was increased by legislative Democrats in a committee vote earlier this month. That maneuver diverted $291 million in excess money in the Education Stabilization Account, an education-specific rainy day fund, back to the overall funding formula, known as the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan.
Republicans and Lombardo’s office said that the move sidestepped a plan by the governor’s office to use the one-time money, a surplus from the ongoing budget period, as seed funding for new early childhood literacy and teacher pipeline budget accounts.
Now core to the debate between the two parties is what, precisely, counts as “one-time money.”
At a press conference last week, Cannizzaro countered that the stabilization account money functioned as any other state revenue, even if it originated from the stabilization account.
Kieckhefer said that any money above what was already budgeted is by nature “cash on hand.”
“Programming that $291 million into the Pupil-Centered Funding Plan is an expense above what was otherwise what our revenues are anticipated to generate,” Kieckhefer said. “So it is one time.”