The zombie bill apocalypse

The post-Walking Dead talk show highlights all those zombies and human who have died on that week’s episode. It is time to take a look at some of the dearly departed bills that were not acted upon by the April deadline in the 2015 Nevada Legislature.

Senate Joint Resolution 16 was an attempt to revive the Equal Rights Amendment, dead since 1982. It succumbed when legal counsel put a knife through its head by declaring that only Congress had the power to revive it. The defunct Nevada Women’s Commission, dead for 15 years, was also decapitated.

Nevada refused to support calling for a new Constitutional Convention. The Con Con movement is pushed by proponents left and right, the left hoping to gut the Second Amendment, the right to install a balanced budget requirement. Both sides claim that they can limit the powers of the delegates at any such convention, but the Supreme Court has said that once a convention is convened, the delegates would be free to do anything they want.

Senate Bill 499 was an attempt to install open primaries in Nevada, and it was crushed after testimony against it by libertarian ballot access expert Richard Winger. Open primaries allow Democrats to vote for Republicans and vice versa, thereby creating strategies where voters can vote for the opposite party’s weakest candidates.

Several education bills failed. Gov. Sandoval succeeded in blocking all anti-Common Core bills. Bills making it easier to subject students to intrusive behavioral surveys, and to require more mandatory vaccinations, were whacked. But a bill to protect the individual identities of the students required to take such surveys also died. Parents cannot inspect sex education materials before approval or stop Planned Parenthood from coming into class. New initiatives for early childhood education and expanded full-day kindergarten were strangled. Assemblymember Hickey’s bill to appoint rather than elect local school board members also got the ax.

Attempts to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and one to allow drugs to be prescribed for assisted suicide, died. Assembly Bill 277, the religious liberty bill, was disemboweled. Gov. Sandoval did not want to be Nevada’s Gov. Pence. On the other hand, S.J.R. 13, which would have amended the Nevada Constitution to remove a ban on same sex marriage also lost its life. It’s Justice Kennedy’s world, we just live in it. (No matter—the existing provision is court-invalidated.)

An attempt to create a state lottery lost its chance. The repeal of the Silver State Health Exchange boondoggle was taken off of life support.

S.B. 352, the Nevada Liberty Preservation Act, which was sponsored by Washoe Republican Sen. Don Gustavson and would have put Nevada on record against the National Defense Authorization Act, indefinite detention, military tribunals, and denial of habeas corpus, got smothered. Ironically, it never got a hearing. Ask Washoe Republican Sen. Greg Brower why not.

S.B. 143, also sponsored by Gustavson, allows both open and concealed gun carry without any government permit. Only Vermont has a law like it. It didn’t make it in Nevada. Nor did a bill requiring Nevada to recognize all other states’ concealed carry permits.

A.B. 408, the Bundy Bill, was not killed but completely re-written. The new bill recognizes the county sheriff as the primary law enforcement authority on land managed by federal agencies. The bill now requires federal agencies to get the sheriff’s consent before any action is taken against Nevadans.

As is characteristic of the living dead, some of these bills may be resurrected in 2017. Still to come are final votes on the bills that made the April cutoff. The budget and possible tax increases are still to be decided. The final countdown begins.