Sage and Sand: On the Ledge
Ruminations on life as a lobbyist at the Nevada legislature, plus our usual roundup of Great Basin news
Greetings from the frozen north. Another week, another onslaught of frozen precipitation in the remote Great Basin outpost of Carson City. I went snowshoeing up at Lake Tahoe last week and sunk in fluffy powder up to my chest. I’ve never seen snow like that.
This missive is mostly devoted to a snapshot of life in the legislature. I’ve been up here for 5 weeks already, and there’s another 11 or so to go. It’s a wild experience and I thought I’d share a little bit of that with you. Plus our normal tidbits on the news. No, onward to our strange story of sausage-making in a backwater capital city in a large squarish Western state…
On The Ledge
Nothing in one’s experience of day-to-day existence in this world can adequately prepare you for the madness that is a Nevada legislative session. No amount of fancy education or esteemed peerage or, conversely, no amount of street smarts or school-of-hard-knocks upbringing can make one ready for the four months from hell in Carson City.
The first thing to know is that, like about a third of states, Nevada’s is a part time legislature. The legislature meets for 120 consecutive calendar days once every two years during its biennial legislative session (or leg. session (ledge session) for short). That means you’re cramming an entire two years (24 months) of governing and running a state into four months. While interim committees meet during the, well interim, to do ministerial work and oversight, the nuts and bolts of running the state and creating law all happens at a pace six times what it normally would, crammed into a few wintry months every odd-numbered year.
The part-time legislative calendar means that Nevada has what’s called a citizen legislature – that is, Nevada’s legislators all (mostly) hold other employment during the other 20 months of the year. Being a legislator is a part-time gig. This presents obvious challenges as it limits who can run for office in the first place – most people’s jobs won’t give them 4 months off to go to what Hugh Jackson calls summer camp in Carson City.
In addition to a part-time legislature, one of the other impediments to good government in Nevada is term limits for elected officials. Term limits are one of those things that sound like a good idea until you actually see them play out in practice, and then you immediately change your mind on the matter. Nevada legislators are limited to 12 years in each house (Senate and Assembly), but remember that means 6 four month legislative session. Meaning that just as one builds seniority and real experience, one is evicted from office.
Because Nevada is a small state, population-wise, its seat of government is also appropriately small. All of the activities of the legislature occur in a single four-story building in downtown Carson City, at the foot of the beautiful Sierra Nevada. We call it The Building. When you’re working at the legislature, you’re In The Building. Within the walls of that four-story Building (really, three and a half stories), the work of the People plays out. 63 legislators, 63 attaches, a couple hundred Legislative Counsel Bureau (LCB) staff who make the whole thing run, and of course… the lobbyists.
One result of having a part-time legislature hemmed in by term limits is that the lobbying corps holds a great degree of the institutional knowledge of the legislature, how it functions, its history, its possibilities and limits. There are over 900 registered lobbyists this session. At any given time in the building, there are, by my guess, 200 lobbyists give or take. Much more if it’s a special lobby day or if there’s a really hot-button bill or budget up.
Lobbyists end up having inordinate power and influence at the legislature because many of them have been at this game far longer than the legislators themselves. The learning curve during a 120-day Ledge Session is very steep, and when the people who’ve done it the most times are generally the ones representing the biggest corporations, you can see how they might have enhanced influence. Additionally, because there are interim committees to attend to and because in general employers and/or clients understand that the four months of round-the-clock frenzy must be paired with some months of less activity, most lobbyists have this as their full-time jobs. Unlike legislators, most lobbyists do not have to juggle outside employment with the legislature.
I never expected to be a lobbyist. My background is in biology for god’s sake. When I got a job with the Center for Biological Diversity in 2017 and they plunked me down in Carson City for my first legislative session, I felt like I might as well have been in the legislative building on Mars. Getting a decent haircut and wearing a suit four days a week? Sitting through hours-long legislative hearings that have nothing to do with my issue just for two minutes to say my piece on the one bill that matters that day? Chasing elected officials in endless circles around The Building to get in a quick word before their next hearing? Also, unlike some of the aforementioned “pro” lobbyists, I actually still do have a normal job – the 365 day a year job of preventing the extinction of biodiversity in the Great Basin and fighting state and federal agencies’ nefarious schemes – and so being at the legislature is harrowing because it’s a 50+ hour per week job just being In The Building, plus trying to fit in your other full time job around it.
Beyond those structural elements that make the Ledge Session so challenging, there is a deep sense of weirdness that permeates the whole scene. The Building is quite small, and the lobbyist room, where one is expected to get one’s work done or take a break or socialize, is about the size of a double college dorm room. Two dozen lobbyists in there is stifling. As a result, people hang out in the hallways. All around The Building, there are lobbyists lurking in the hallways. There are chairs and couches positioned here and there and they become epicenters of activity. But even where there are no chairs – just hanging around in hallways, huddled in groups talking quietly – lobbyists everywhere.
This means there is no privacy, so everything takes on a conspiratorial bent. You see your compatriot, and you try to pull them aside along one wall of the hallway to speak. You speak in low tones, of course, a little above a whisper. More of a murmur really. Low enough that you need to stand close to one another. There’s no way to avoid being at least somewhat heard, so the whole time you are scanning the scene, eyes darting from one side of the hallway to the other, seeing who is around, who may be passing by, who is seeing you seeing them, who is talking to whom. You probably hear snippets of the conversation next to you, but if you’ve positioned yourself properly, it’s someone you don’t interact with conspiring with someone else you don’t interact with about an issue you don’t care about. The hallway scene is wild – see and be seen; hear but don’t be heard.
Then you and your compatriot realize you need to check in with another lobbyist, and you say, “I think I saw him on the third floor couches,” so you take off for the third floor to have another quiet, conspiratorial conversation near the couches, with your eyes darting back and forth in total awareness. Then you decide you need to run something by a legislator who is championing one of your bills. So you check on the video of the committee hearing they’re in, and it looks like it’s almost over, so you take off at a brisk pace across the building and down one or two flights of stairs to catch them as they’re walking from the committee room to their office. You get, maybe, 2 minutes with them if you’re lucky. If you’re good, you can get your business done in 30 seconds.
Now, I fill an interesting role at the legislature because I’m one of those lobbyists who is there because of mission, not money. Not that I don’t get paid for my job, I do. But there’s nobody at the Center forcing me at knifepoint to spend four months in Carson City. I do it because I, and my bosses, believe that it’s a place for the Center to be effective in pursuing our agenda of saving life on Earth. Point being, there’s a handful – I don’t know, 20% or less – of lobbyists who are In The Building because they care deeply about the issues they are advocating for, and want to use the legislature to advance their causes. This stands in stark contrast to the majority, who will lobby on whatever issues someone gives them money to lobby on.
It’s hard to overstate the difference in approach between someone who is getting paid to pretend they care about something and someone who actually cares. For starters, if you’re getting paid by the issue, then getting your clients half a loaf is a win. So you cut a deal, get your client half a loaf, and everyone walks away happy. Whereas, for my clients -- wildflowers and fish and eagles – half a loaf may mean extinction or habitat destruction. So I’m rarely in the frame of mind to cut a deal. And secondarily, that cost of losing – extinction, habitat destruction – means that many issues take on an existential bent. In some cases, losing is not an option and we need to pull out all the stops, take every conceivable measure, to prevent losing. Like with AB30 in 2019.
And honestly, those other mission-driven people in the legislature – not just lobbyists but also some portion of legislators and even agency staffers – they’re how I survive. While most of the people In The Building are there to accumulate power and money and the power to make more money, the mission-driven folks stick out like sore thumbs. That includes a good number of legislators – a couple dozen maybe? And, no matter if we work on different issues and committees or even are on opposite sides of the issues, there is a certain camaraderie among mission-driven people at the legislature that binds us together. “I’m here because I care.” Those are incredibly powerful words.
Five or six hundred people jammed into a small four-story pressure cooker, sleep deprived and heavily caffeinated, motivated by ideology and passion or by power and money, wearing their most expensive clothes, jockeying to get ears and eyes on them and their perspectives, darting in and out of offices and hallways, conspiratorially murmuring and glaring about. It’s crazy. It’s exhausting. It’s exhilarating. It’s like nothing else.
Carson City, on the other hand, is incredibly charming. A town of 60,000 people nestled in the Eagle Valley at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, with the mighty Carson River running alongside, it is at once rustic and yet has a sort of rural-cosmopolitan charm. In some ways it is evocative of other provincial state capitals, like Montpelier or Helena. There’s a variety of decent restaurants, there’s still a lot of mom and pop businesses, there’s a cute downtown, it’s incredibly easy to get around, there are excellent hiking trails in every direction, Lake Tahoe is half an hour away, and oh did I mention there’s a world-class hot spring resort less than 10 minutes away from the capitol? What’s not to like?
Oh, right. The weather. Yes the weather is generally dreadful the first few months of session. This year being no exception. As I’m writing this it’s snowing (again), on top of the rain that fell yesterday which melted the snow that had previously accumulated. Gross. Also some mornings it is like 5 degrees out, which makes for a very brisk morning walk up Prison Hill. A daily hike up Prison Hill is the only way I keep madness at bay.
Then of course, for those of us who don’t live in northern Nevada, there is the rather visceral experience of living in a crummy hotel for four months. The infamous Carson City Plaza Hotel is conveniently situated just two blocks from The Building, and plays host to many southern Nevada lobbyists and legislators. They have a killer deal for the whole session, so much cheaper than the other options that it’s hard to justify anything else. Yes, it’s kind of gross and everything in the room is sort of broken and the carpet has an iron burn on it and there’s mysterious stains on the couch and you really should bring your own linens if you’re staying there for four months and the shower makes a crazy noise when you turn on the hot water and there’s a bunch of people who just like live here year-round and there’s a noisy bar across the street. But hey, where else can you roll out of bed, put on your suit, and be at a committee hearing five minutes later?
So anyway, that’s the experience of the legislature in a nutshell. This is my fourth legislative session, and while I’ve learned a lot, I still am learning every single day. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever experienced in life. And in its own way, I love it. But ask me how I’m feeling 11 weeks from now at Sine Die. That’ll be the real test.
Goings On At the Legislature
Last Monday was the very first Environmental Justice Lobby Day at the Nevada legislature, put on by the Nevada Environmental Justice Coalition (NEJC). Partner groups brought in constituents from across the state, including two busloads of people from Las Vegas, to lobby for environmental justice at the legislature. Priority bills include an Outdoor Worker Protection Bill, to give rights to Nevada’s outdoor workers who deal with extreme heat and smoke; a bill (AB71) mandating NDEP do a review of environmental justice in the state and make recommendations for policies to correct injustice; and a Green Amendment (AJR3), a constitutional amendment guaranteeing rights to clean air and water and a health environment for all Nevadans. EJ Lobby Day was a huge success due to the hard work of folks like Cinthia Moore from NEJC and partners at PLAN, Make The Road NV, Chispa, and more. I was so proud to play a small role in this momentous day, but it was the blood sweat and tears of the aforementioned who made it happen. Read more in The Nevada Independent and the Nevada Current.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority has proposed an ambitious bill which would give them a number of powers to restrict water use in Las Vegas in times of crisis. The bill, AB220, was originally billed “The Septic Tank Bill” because it would eliminate the use of septic tanks in the Las Vegas Valley (reason being that septic tanks do not return wastewater to the system which SNWA then recycles, hence are a net drain on Colorado River resources). However it’s become clear that the much more significant aspects of the bill are the emergency powers given to SNWA to severely restrict water usage, particularly among high water users. Colton Lochhead has more in the Review-Journal.
AB112 is a bill to establish a fund and policy mechanism to promote wildlife crossings in Nevada. Wildlife crossings – infrastructure that allows wildlife to cross linear disturbances like highways and railroads unimpeded – have proven tremendously successful thus far in Nevada. The famous crossing in the Pequop Mountains across I-80 in Elko County has reduced auto collisions with wildlife by over 90%, as it spans a key mule deer migration corridor. The crossing over Interstate 11 near the Hoover Dam was immediately utilized by desert bighorn sheep upon the ribbon cutting. These things work. AB112 is a great bill and I hope it makes it through the money committees intact. Read an op-ed from Nevada Wildlife Federation’s Russell Kuhlman in The Indy.
Readers of this newsletter are aware of our attempts to raise awareness about the lack of management authority and conservation action in Nevada for invertebrates. Basically, the state does not classify invertebrates like bees and butterflies as wildlife, and thus no agency is responsible for them. AB221 would grant such authority to the Nevada Department of Wildlife for 66 bees and butterflies of greatest conservation need. It’s an important tool to protect biodiversity in Nevada, and we strongly support this bill. Read more on the problem of lack of management authority in a recent story in the New York Times. Kudos to the Xerces Society for raising awareness on this issue.
In my last newsletter, I linked to a compelling article from Jessica Hill in the Review-Journal about a cancer cluster on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, and the need to build a new school to protect schoolchildren from environmental toxins. Well, Senator Ira Hansen and Assemblywoman Alexis Hansen have taken a huge step to remedy this environmental injustice, introducing AB273, which would appropriate $70 million to construct the new school. This is a critical environmental justice issue and I look forward to engaging to help move this legislation forward. And three cheers to Senator and Assemblywoman Hansen for standing up for their constituents.
Governor Sherriff Lombardo Not Pleasing Progressives
The honeymoon lasted about two months. Governor Sherriff Lombardo’s appointment of former state Senator Ben Kieckhefer as chief of staff made some people believe he would be a moderate. And indeed, on some social issues both Sen. Kieckhefer and the Governor have track records that are less-than-extreme. But Sen. Kieckhefer was nothing if not an emissary of big business during his time at the legislature. And who exactly do you think got this governor elected? So, as Lombardo proclaimed the dominance of The Nevada Way in his inaugural address, it has come to symbolize the domination of big business over state government in the eyes of many. And the latest big fat multi-hundred-million-dollar subsidy the Governor’s Office on Economic Development just pumped into Tesla just seems evidence of that.
Enter Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada’s (PLAN’s) executive director Laura Martin. Ms. Martin is a tremendous advocate for the people of Nevada – the communities overlooked by The Nevada Way and the corporations who run this state. PLAN is the conscience of the progressive movement in Nevada, and with Ms. Martin at the helm they are among the most potent populist forces in state politics. Ms. Martin published a devastating critique of Governor Sherriff Lombardo and The Nevada Way in the Reno Gazette Journal last week. It’s a must-read update on the trajectory of this administration toward increased corporate control, increased subservience to big business, and a diminished welfare state. This will be the defining fight of the next four years in Nevada – The Nevada Way or the way of the people? Only time will tell, but I’m glad for Ms. Martin to be leading the charge.
Read more: Reno Gazette Journal op-ed.
Superbloom Supercontroversy
`You may have heard about a bit of water falling from the sky on California. OK, actually we’re talking apocalyptic levels of precipitation across most of the state. While there is actually disparity as to how much precip has fallen (my home on the edge of Death Valley is barely having a normal precip year – far from historic), much of California is sodden at the moment and that has led to widespread speculation about a superbloom of wildflowers. While this has yet to fully materialize – Anza Borrego and the Colorado Desert have some good flowers at the moment but the still-cold Mojave is as yet mostly dormant – the discussion and the buzz has been already moving to a fever pitch. At least partially because, after the Poppy Apocalypse of 2019, botanists are sounding the alarm.
One botanist in particular. Frequent Center for Biological Diversity collaborator, and my partner in arms on #TeamBuckwheat, Dr. Naomi Fraga has been out in front on the discussion of the ecological impacts of superbloom-mania in recent weeks. She started off the discussion with an epic Twitter thread, which touched off a media frenzy. Most notably, she published a well-received op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, entitled, “Your ‘superbloom’ selfie isn’t worth destroying California’s ecosystems.” She also had articles in the San Francisco Standard, National Geographic, Salon, and many more. She has her critics, though I think some green-eyed grudges may be coming into play. But by and large the botanical community has supported the cautionary notes being sounded about the impacts of superbloom selflie tourism. Kudos to Dr. Fraga, and remember, view wildflowers responsibly!
Read more: Los Angeles Times op-ed.
A Campaign Once Described As A Cause Célèbre
Senator Cortez Masto has brought back the Ruby Mountains Protection Act (RMPA). This bill would withdraw significant portions of the Ruby Mountains and East Humboldt Mountains on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest from oil and gas leasing. This was in response to our successful campaign to stop a plan for oil leasing there, successful in no small part because of her introduction of the bill in early 2019. While I was thrilled to win that battle in 2019, I maintain that the chief threat to the Ruby Mountains is mining, not oil and gas, and this legislation would do nothing to stop the scourge of gold mining that is currently negatively impacting wildlife in the Rubies. The RMPA was also shoehorned into the legislative proposal for the Fallon military expansion in the National Defense Authorization Act, something we objected to based on principle (the RMPA has nothing to do with military activities) and based on politics (we shouldn’t be trading protections in the Rubies for massive military expansion). In the end, due to its lack of relevance to the military, it was excised from the NDAA and the Fallon expansion went through on its own. Thus, the RMPA has yet to become law. Perhaps if it included a mining withdrawal we could really talk about conservation in the Rubies. Until then, we’re mostly on the sidelines on this bill.
Quickly…
The tentacles of Nevada’s multinational mining industry reach far – in this case into Guatemala. There, indigenous and non-indigenous people have been resisting mining proposals from Nevada-based Kappes, Cassiday & Associates. I’m not familiar with that outfit, but mining is truly one of the leading edges of natural resource imperialism. More power to these Guatemalans fighting for their homes.
Lithium mining activity is reaching a fever pitch at Bonnie Clare Playa and Sarcobatus Flat, north of Beatty. This beautiful area is adjacent to the Scotts Castle portion of Death Valley National Park, and is likely a groundwater flow path to the extensive Grapevine Springs complex in the Park. Several companies are doing exploration projects for lithium in the area – one is hyping that they produced lithium carbonate already from a test run. Sure to tick up the penny stock another penny or two.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board apparently doesn’t understand that there are ecological impacts to widespread moving of rocks in protected areas. They wrote a snarky editorial slighting the Bureau of Land Management for investigating a large-scale rock-moving incident on public land outside of Las Vegas. Glad the BLM is actually doing something to protect public lands instead of just handing out more permits to mining companies.
I mentioned the recent study showing fossils directly beneath the alignment of Greenlink West where it crosses Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. E&E News published a story on it this week, which received a lot of exposure as far as E&E News articles go (they are normally paywalled). Reporter Scott Streater has an in depth look at the controversy, and the article is not paywalled so I recommend reading it. Glad to see the Protectors of Tule Springs raising the alarm about this.
There’s always so much more to cover and not enough newsletter space to do it in. Thanks as always for reading. Keep on down that long and dusty trail,
-Patrick
Nice description of the hallways. Understanding the intricacies of the hallway in great detail is so important. It's what allows you to recognize when someone is not where they usually are, or is somewhere they usually aren't or is with or without someone they're usually not with or without. That's how to recognize something is afoot!
This was so insightful. Thank you for writing such details about it all.