LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Supporters of a bill to safeguard animal welfare were disappointed on Friday when their bill died without getting voted out of committee.
And nobody was more disappointed than Assemblywoman Melissa Hardy, R-Clark County, who'd been working on Assembly Bill 381 ever since a bulldog named Reba was cruelly left in a storage container in the summer heat in Las Vegas in July.
Reba was rescued from the bin, but later died. Hardy nicknamed her bill "Reba's Law."
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Hardy said she'd worked on the bill all the way up until Thursday, the day before a critical legislative deadline.
But on Friday, the bill wasn't on the list of legislation before the Assembly Judiciary Committee. And when the committee finished it's business, Chair Brittney Miller, D-Clark County, adjourned the meeting.
Hardy thought it was over.
But over the weekend, animal activists cried foul, demanding the bill be brought back and threatening to vote out members of the committee who had opposed it.
On Monday, Hardy was surprised once more to find that her bill had been given a waiver, an exception to the deadline rules that required both Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager and Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro to agree.
A Democratic caucus spokesman confirmed that Yeager had sought the waiver, in consultation with Miller and Assembly Judiciary Vice Chair Elaine Marzola, D-Clark County.
And Yeager also signed on as a co-sponsor.
Miller said during a Monday hearing where the bill passed unanimously that no one had ever voted against the bill, but that a flurry of last-minute amendments created doubts as to whether it had the votes to pass. She stressed that everyone on the committee opposed acts of animal cruelty.
Hardy, however, said she'd counted her votes, even with the amendments, and is confident the bill would have passed on Friday had it come up for a vote.
Hardy thanked the many people who have supported Reba's Law, but cautioned them that there's still a long way to go before they can rest.
"It's a miracle that we're here today, and I just, you know, ask the public, everybody that's been involved to don't let go because it's not over," she said.
From here, the bill has to go to the full Assembly for a vote. If approved, it then goes to the state Senate, where it will be heard before the Judiciary Committee. (Chair Sen. Melanie Scheible, D-Clark County, is also a co-sponsor.) Then, the Senate has to pass the bill before it can go to Gov. Joe Lombardo for a signature.
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Waivers rare
The waiver provision is provided for in the Assembly-Senate concurrent resolution that establishes the rules for the legislative session.
Under Rule No. 14.5, deadlines can be waived at the request of a lawmaker or a committee, but any such waiver has to have the permission of both Yeager and Cannizzaro.
That's all part of the deadlines established so that the Legislature can finish its work in the constitutionally mandated 120-day session. There are deadlines for lawmakers and committees to introduce bills, as well as deadlines for committees to pass them. (Friday was the deadline for bills to pass out of committee in the house in which they were introduced.)
Then there are deadlines for Assembly and Senate bills to be approved by the respective houses and pass over to the other house, where the process repeats, with another committee passage deadline falling late May.
The ultimate deadline is the only one that can't be waived by anyone: at midnight on the 120th day — which falls on June 2 this year — the session officially ends, and any bills that haven't been passed by both houses are lost. That deadline is known as "sine die," Latin words that translate to adjourning "without a date" to reconvene, at least until the next session.
There are, of course, exceptions.
Bills that have died earlier in the process can be brought back as amendments. Bills that have survived toward the end of the session can be hijacked, their language replaced with the text of dead measures.
And the frenetic closing days and hours of every session are marked by conference committees and last-minute amendments, quickly approved by lawmakers huddling at the back of the Assembly and Senate chambers as midnight approaches.
Legislative veterans know the truism: Nothing in Carson City is truly dead until the final gavel falls, near midnight on June 2.
