Roller coasters have nothing on Nevada’s Legislature

If you were a little confused Tuesday about the fate of a bill that would allow the Clark County School District to get to work building badly needed new schools, don’t be embarrassed. You were not alone.

There were two votes, separated by the passage of an alternative bill in the Senate, followed by a Legislative Police complaint about intimidation. And still to come, a vote that will send a bill to Gov. Brian Sandoval for his signature.

Whew. And it’s only March!

First, a little background: Senate Bill 119 would allow school districts to “roll over” some of their ability to issue debt to build new schools, an idea supported by Republicans and Democrats alike. But Senate Republicans rolled a poison pill into the bill; it would free districts from having to pay higher, union-supported prevailing wages on school building projects.

The bill passed the Senate with only Republicans in support on Feb. 16, after Democrats tried unsuccessfully to amend the bill to pass only the school-building portion.

Meanwhile, Democrats in the Assembly had much the same reaction. During a marathon hearing Feb. 26, Minority Leader Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas, summed their feelings, saying the bill encompassed two separate issues, and deserved two separate debates.

She almost got her wish.

On Tuesday morning, in the Assembly Government Affairs Committee, two Las Vegas Republicans (Glenn Trowbridge and John Moore) joined with minority Democrats to kill the bill, potentially threatening the Clark County School District’s ability to have seven new schools open in time for the 2017-18 school year.

In desperation, Senate Republicans introduced Senate Bill 207, the “clean” school-building bill that Democrats had sought from the beginning, stripped of the prevailing wage piece. It was quickly passed on a vote of 15-4, with a quartet of conservative Republicans opposed. (Sen. Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka, for one, said he wouldn’t support the school-building provisions without the prevailing wage reform.)

The bill arrived in the Assembly, but members of the Government Affairs Committee were still discussing the now-dead SB119. In Carson City, however, nothing is truly dead until the final gavel comes down. The committee went back into session and revived the original bill by another 8-6 vote, this time with Trowbridge and Moore joining with their fellow Republicans to pass the bill.

Moore, however, said he’d been pressured to vote yes by Assembly Majority Leader Paul Anderson, R-Las Vegas, during a confrontation in a legislative stairwell. “He [Anderson] took me to the stairwell and made threats against me and intimidated me,” Moore said. He was so upset by the encounter, he filed a report with the Legislative Police.

Now, really, in a Republican caucus where so many of the members are armed and introduce bills that expand the circumstances in which it’s OK to kill people, is stairwell intimidation really a good idea? At least Moore did the right thing by contacting police and not trying to stand his ground!

The Assembly decided to table the Senate’s clean school-building bill, and will likely take up the original SB119 this week, where it will need at least 22 votes to pass. (Republicans have 25 members, Democrats 17, but Trowbridge and Moore, specifically, said they may vote against it when it comes up on the floor.)

So, it’s still possible (albeit unlikely) we could see the combined school-building/prevailing wage bill defeated on the Assembly floor, forcing lawmakers to call up the clean Senate bill. That version is guaranteed to get support from a majority of Democrats and quite a few Republicans, just as it did in the Senate.

The fact is, Kirkpatrick was right: The prevailing wage issue deserves its own bill, and a solution to that problem could be had short of erasing the concept for an entire category of construction.

Still, Republicans have shown their hand. If they’re forced to choose between keeping the partial prevailing wage repeal or authorizing the building of new schools, most of them will side with schools. That’s actually a good thing.

Steve Sebelius is a Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist who blogs at SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.