Nevada

Weak-to-nonexistent disclosure requirements for most major categories, with the worst user experience score for its website of any state. Lobbyists do not have to report their compensation, or the positions they take on bills, or the numbers of these bills. Expenditures on meals and gifts are only listed as line items in a very long list of all lobbyists that isn’t downloadable, and these expenditures are attributed to the lobbyists who paid for them, without naming their beneficiaries. Nevada requires monthly reporting of expenditures during the five months of its every-other-year session, which is good, but none in between sessions, which means that lobbyists go 19 months without filing a report.

A May 2023 study from Climate Central found that the climate crisis will dramatically increase the frequency and severity of wildfires in Nevada. Meanwhile, studies from anti-cancer organizations such as the National Cancer Institute find that wildfire smoke will increase many Americans’ exposure to airborne carcinogens.

In Nevada, lobbyist Drew Franklin lobbies simultaneously for the North Tahoe Fire Protection District and TC Energy, operator of gas pipelines and developer of Canadian tar sands oil, exposure to which has been linked to cancer in First Nations populations near TC projects in Canada. Franklin also represents the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada.

To what extent is this lobbyist’s advocacy for TC Energy increasing both fire and health care risks for Nevadans and people in North Tahoe? Nevada makes it hard to know.

Best feature: lobbyist list clearly states if lobbyists are Paid, Non-Paid, or Paid Non-Profit.

Worst feature: the whole thing. Nevada’s lobbyist website received the worst user experience score of any state.

Additional Findings

Nevada’s lobbyist reporting system is a little difficult to access, housed on the state legislature website under the Counsel Bureau tab. The hyperlink to the lobbyist search tool is a hidden in a wall of text and opens into an outadated search tool. Searches are organized by legislative session, and there are no reports filed between sessions, so that, as of June 2024, the most recent reports are from June 2023. Each session includes different types of information. For example, the 2023 reports include 9 different data fields, while the other sessions include 3-5. Only the lobbyist and client reports/lists are consistent. A directory is available on a different tab for 2023, though doesn’t appear to be downloadable, and only lists lobbyist name and then a long list of clients in the view field. It’s the opposite for the client directory tab, with clients listed first and then a long list of lobbyists following.

Overall, Nevada’s lobbyist reporting system is wonky, difficult to find, and hard to process. It requires having some sort of excel knowledge to be able to parse through the copied view field. If there is a way to export a full list, it isn’t very clear on their site.