Looking back (and a little forward): 2023 selections & reflections from the Nevada Current staff

Note: As we do near the end of every year, each writer on the Nevada Current staff took a little time to highlight some of their work from the year, and say whatever they wanted to say about it.

Dana Gentry

An embarrassment of riches. That’s how I’d sum up 2023 for its news value. In case you had trouble keeping up, or just care to revisit, here’s a look at some of the highlights.  

Federal probe of casino companies, executives, said to be widening

A source close to the multi-agency California-based federal investigation of Las Vegas casino companies, particularly Resorts World and MGM Resorts International, revealed in our exclusive story in August and in a  federal subpoena issued weeks later, says the probe has expanded beyond its original confines. The feds are now said to be inquiring about Gov. Joe Lombardo’s relationship with former RW president and COO Scott Sibella. The governor’s office has declined to comment. More on that in the coming year. 

Feds investigating Las Vegas casinos, say sources

Nevada gaming regulators questioned Sibella last year about his relationship with gamblers banned from other casinos. A year later, Lombardo’s newly appointed gaming control board member, George Assad, in an uncharacteristic move for regulators, announced the agency had cleared Sibella of wrongdoing.  

While politically-related federal investigations rarely go anywhere in Nevada, the fact that this probe is being conducted from outside the state adds an interesting twist. 

The A’s have it

When the Oakland A’s went shopping for new digs, they hired a consultant with really close ties to the tourism officials yearning to make the move happen. Only problem is the Nevadans who watched the consultant, Jeremy Aguero, make the case before lawmakers for publicly funding a stadium for the A’s were not advised Aguero was working for the team, not the government-funded tourism agency he also works for in his capacity with the Stadium Authority.    

“No worries,” or words to that effect, said the legislative counsel bureau chief.   

Nonetheless, Aguero, in a position to negotiate the A’s contract with himself in his job with the Stadium Authority, eventually gave up that gig. 

Feeling hot, hot, hot over NV Energy sports team sponsorships

The dreaded arrival of summer electricity bills was preceded by a projection from the state’s consumer advocate that the average power bill for July would more closely resemble a car payment.

Then came the Current’s exclusive report on the costly ads NV Energy purchases (and you pay for) as part of the company’s sports sponsorships, in an effort to apprise sports fans of the savings available via a vague energy conservation campaign called PowerShift. Because sports fans who pretend to be preoccupied with the live action on the field (hockey rink or court) are really pondering how they can cut their power bills.  

NV Energy fought back but eventually canned the customer-subsidized ads after regulators ordered the utility to be more transparent about its sponsorships. 

The Animal Foundation caught fudging the numbers 

Critics of Southern Nevada’s primary government-funded shelter, the Animal Foundation (TAF) contend the non-profit running the shelter is less than transparent about its operation. Our reporting on a government audit of the shelter revealed it was exaggerating its occupancy count to discourage animal control officers and the public from bringing in more dogs and cats. 

By year’s end, local governments were taking steps to increase demands on the shelter as well as the governments’  presence in exchange for an infusion of more public money. 

Jeniffer Solis

A friend of mine recently joked that the parents of El Niño and La Niña need to get these kids under control.

For scientists carefully observing these oceanic and atmospheric weather patterns, there’s a sneaking suspicion that the adults left the room long ago.

November 2023 was the second-warmest November in recorded history for North America, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And global carbon emissions from fossil fuels reached record levels in 2023, according to climate researchers. 

Optimists say the tide is turning. Earlier this month, nations struck a deal at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels. It’s a non-enforceable agreement, but it’s a solid house rule. Good job adults.

In the meantime, more destructive natural disasters are harming rural communities in Nevada year after year. Wildfires, drought, extreme heat waves, floods, etc. 

Confronting climate change impacts, tribes prepare and persist

From not enough water to too much, flooding in Nevada brought destruction and drought relief this year. In a series made possible by a field reporting grant, we covered some of those dynamics. 

From infrastructure to the environment, the effects of summer flooding on rural and tribal communities in Nevada were formidable.  But so were the solutions. Nevadans are battle born after all. 

Development of lithium mines and renewable energy on Nevada’s open public lands is the only and best solution to these disasters, say important state and federal officials. 

Only time will tell how it all pans out, but we’re committed to reporting on every aspect of that transition. From Nevadans concerns about lithium mining in the least populated county in the state, to the effects of geothermal development on the smallest toads. 

Thank you for reading.

Camalot Todd

Some good things this year: I bought my very first home… well condo, but still. My beloved dog Kush now has a feline sister named Penicillin. And my Fiat finally has four hubcaps. I also had the opportunity to be a grantee of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Domestic Violence Impact Reporting Fund, which led to stories about how jurisdictional ambiguities make prosecuting non-Natives who commit domestic abuse hard, the shortage of nurses in the state to provide free strangulation exams outlined in state law, and how the state’s narrow domestic abuse law doesn’t include financial abuse.  

This year,  I also did some legislative coverage tackling stories like Nevada criminalizing fentanyl possession at lower quantities than the federal government, and a bill that would’ve given the many substitute teachers who are stepping up during Nevada’s ongoing teacher shortage a small health care stipend. That was one of many health care bills that met the governor’s veto pen.  

Under the category of most interesting policy that wasn’t, lawmakers decided not to address the health care provider shortage. State Sen. Roberta Lange (D-Las Vegas) tested the waters for a bill that would mandate insurance companies to accept any provider who meets their qualifications and applies to be in their network, known as an “Any Willing Provider” law. It’s popular with health care providers, and 35 other states have enacted it, but Lange abandoned it in favor of a far narrower scope, saying she “tested the temperature,” and “it’s not going to pass in Nevada.”

Lawmaker, providers agree reform would ease access to care, but ‘it’s not going to pass in Nevada’

I had the displeasure of being the messenger on some bad things this year (this is my public plea into the void to please please give everyone a much-needed break in 2024): Car insurance in Nevada is going up and up and there’s no relief in sight, and we had the highest Medicaid disenrollment rate in the country for paperwork and procedural causes until the feds stepped in and paused it. The state will resume disenrolling people on procedural grounds in January. Happy New Year, I guess? 

The state tops a long list of bad bad things, including but not limited to: children without health insurance, ambulance deserts, and low lung cancer screening rates. And ER visits for depression and anxiety skyrocketed in the last decade.

We also had our second mass shooting in Las Vegas earlier this month where three UNLV faculty members died.  Within hours, there were resources set up for students, faculty, and those impacted, including mental health resources. If the Oct. 1 mass shooting taught us anything, it was that in these darker moments, Nevadans do truly and deeply care about each other, and I hope that the depth of tenderness continues into 2024. Goodness knows we need it. 

Michael Lyle

I still think about Jada Kirkwood, a woman who was evicted in June after the state’s eviction protection expired. Since 2021, a state law paused an eviction case while rental assistance applications were being processed. The policy was put in place as a sort of exit ramp to a more robust eviction moratorium established during the pandemic to ensure if rental assistance was available, landlords could be paid anything owed to them in lieu of an eviction. Because why evict someone for nonpayment of rent if their rent could easily be paid with rental assistance dollars?

But the law sunset and legislation to extend it was left in limbo for a couple weeks. I wrote about that brief period of time. Kirkwood, who cared for her ailing mother, was among the first tenants to receive an eviction after the law expired.

I haven’t been able to get in touch with Kirkwood to learn what happened next. 

The legislation to extend the protection was vetoed. There were a few articles, in our outlet and others, immediately following that veto. However, I knew there was more to the story. 

For the next several months, I put in data records requests, talked with officials from the county, social services and legal aid groups, and sat in numerous eviction proceedings over several months to fully understand the aftermath of that veto. It is by far one of the most in-depth reporting packages I’ve produced as a reporter.  

For a while, a series of measures protected renters from NV’s harsh eviction laws. Not anymore.

Aside from reporting on the housing crisis, I have to say reporting on a legal clinic for trans and gender nonconforming people was one of my favorites. 

Nevada Legal Services and The LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada partnered together to offer a free legal clinic to help trans people go through the legal process to change their names and gender markers on documents. 

The trans and gender nonconforming community is experiencing such vitriol and hate. It’s not a new thing, but has intensified in a way that is frightening for that community. At the center of these nationwide attacks are just people trying to live their lives. That includes Emily, who received assistance from the legal clinic. 

I will let Emily speak for herself on what this assistance meant to her: “When I was born, I was given the wrong name and the wrong gender marker. It’s an inconsistency I had to live with my entire life. It’s an error that’s been forced on me that I had to live with my whole life. To be able to easily, efficiently and frankly quickly finally fix that error, it’s amazing.” 

April Corbin Girnus

Remember when Nevada approved hundreds of millions of dollars in tax incentives for a billionaire?

Actually. That happened twice this year!

In June, the Nevada State Legislature approved $380 million in tax incentives for the Oakland Athletics to become the Unincorporated Clark County Athletics and build a baseball park on the famed Unincorporated Clark County Strip. But let us not forget that several months before that, in March of this year, the Governor’s Office Of Economic Development, without any input from legislators, approved $412 million in tax incentives for Tesla, an electric car company whose CEO and biggest shareholder is Elon Musk, a man whose net worth is equivalent to 85 John Fishers, according to the internet.

The outcomes of both of those initial requests for corporate welfare may have been inevitable, but covering it as we did — with a heavy dose of skepticism and a focus on the impact to all Nevadans — was important.

But enough about rich people. Let’s talk about teachers.

Another of my favorite stories from this year was about how Clark County teachers inspired Nevada’s anti-strike law and how they might also upend it. For much of this year, the narrative began and ended at “teachers aren’t allowed to strike.” But in the fall, the teachers union filed a lawsuit attempting to overturn the law, a move that would upend power dynamics in the state.

Clark County teachers inspired Nevada’s anti-strike law. They might also upend it.

Was it a ruse to pressure the district into settling a contract? Perhaps. Do I expect it to go anywhere in the upcoming year, especially since the teachers union secured most of what it wanted? No, not really. But was it a seed worth planting in the minds of state lawmakers and the public? Absolutely.

My favorite stories from this year, and my favorite stories of all time from the Current, are those that look at the bigger picture, that question previously unchallenged narratives. I think our coverage of the A’s, Tesla and the strike law largely did just that, and I’m so proud of it.

Here are three other personal favorites from the year:

Tracking the state’s attempt to give charter schools money to launch transportation programs. Turns out transportation is super complicated!

State lawmakers approved the use of natural organic reduction of human remains — aka, human composting, or my favorite bill of this year’s legislative session.

Lawmakers also outlawed a predatory title scheme that I suspect a lot of people had no clue was even a thing.

Hugh Jackson

Nevada’s upside-down tax structure means the less you make, the higher the percentage of your income you pay in taxes. And no, being a tourist economy doesn’t make it ok.

‘The tourists pay it’ is a lousy excuse for punishing Nevadans with a regressive tax system

Continuing to disproportionately burden those on the bottom to please those on the top doesn’t bother Nevada governors and lawmakers; if it did they would do something about it.  They never do.

Democrats have a strong chance of winning two-thirds majorities in both houses of the state legislature in the 2024 election. I remain convinced that they’ll blow it, deliberately, because if they had supermajorities they would no longer have an excuse for continuing to ignore a tax structure that punishes working people – a policy choice that the vast majority of lawmakers of both parties refuse to even acknowledge.

So Nevada’s blithe acceptance of an abusive tax structure that makes poor people poorer – that’s one of my main takeaways (a perennial) from 2023.

Another is the state’s ongoing willingness to normalize Trumpism.

To be fair, that doesn’t make Nevada special. Alarmingly large portions of the electorate across the U.S. are showing a disregard of or even hostility to democracy. Nevada movers and shakers and deal makers proclaim Nevada is unique. But when it comes to sucking up to Trump and Trumpism, Nevada Republicans are pretty much the same as Republicans everywhere anymore.

For Republican “leaders” in Nevada and the nation, moral bankruptcy is the new norm, and they’re giving every indication that they’ll burrow even further down the filthy rathole in the new year. 

Good luck