With the rules changed to allow pre-filing of proposed legislation, the 120-day session will start with a full trough. 128 Assembly bills have been pre-filed and 125 Senate bills have already been pre-filed. All those bills be introduced in the few days of the respective house’s session.
For those of you who may not be familiar with the workings of the State legislature, there are a series of tough deadlines and hurdles for passing any proposed bill.
- 2/14/2011: Deadline for individual legislators to request legislation.
- 3/21/2011: Deadline for lawmakers to introduce legislation
- 3/28/2011: Deadline for committees to introduce legislation.
- 4/15/2011: Deadline for legislation to clear the house in which it originated, unless exempted by leadership (this deadline typically ends consideration of a large number of bills.
- 6/01/2011: Deadline for Budget and exempted bills to be introduced
- 6/06/2011: Session Adjournment
Under Nevada’s Constitution, no legislation can become law if it doesn’t pass by the end of the 120th calendar day of the session.
Summaries for all pre-filed bills for the 76th (2011) Session of the Nevada Legislature can be found here for both the State Assembly and the State Senate.
It’s likely that a very large number of these bills will not be enacted, as this legislature has monumental budget issues to overcome … and … 2011 is a redistricting year. As such, an inordinate amount of time will be devoted to the budget and redistricting issues to the detriment of other issues in a number of these bills.