The public record · Nevada

The Nevada Legislature

Sixty-three seats across two chambers, meeting in Carson City — what they have done, drawn from the legislature’s own record.

How a bill becomes law in Nevada

Where a bill starts

Almost every Nevada bill begins as a Bill Draft Request — a BDR — filed with the Legislature’s lawyers, often months before the session opens. The request carries a requester, a subject and a number, and it is public whether or not it ever becomes a bill. When the draft is finished it is introduced in one of the two houses, read by title, and referred to a committee the same day.

In draftingpublic from the day it is filed

In each house — the same two steps, twice

A committee can amend the bill and report it out, or never take it up at all — most bills end here. One that survives goes to the floor, where it is read twice more: once when it can be amended, once when it is debated and put to a vote. Then it crosses to the other house and does both again, starting with another committee. The Legislature sits 120 days every other year, and more bills run out of days than lose a vote.

In committeewhere most bills die

On the floorsecond and third reading

After both houses

If the second house changed the text, the first house concurs or refuses; the second then recedes or insists, and a conference committee settles anything still open. The Governor signs the bill, vetoes it, or lets it become law unsigned. An enacted bill is numbered as a chapter in the Statutes of Nevada.

Resolving differencesconcurrence, recession, or conference

With the Governorsign, veto, or let it pass

Became lawnumbered as a chapter

MembersEveryone who serves in the Senate and the Assembly, and the district each was elected from.LegislationAssembly and Senate bills and resolutions, across every session we hold — and how far each one got.VotesThe floor record: every recorded vote, and how each legislator cast it.