Steve Yeager, the Speaker of the Assembly, said on Nevada Newsmakers there is a good possibility of a special session of the Legislature later this year to deal with cuts in federal appropriations.

"I think still think it's likely we're going to end up in special session in September, October when the federal budget gets figured out," Yeager told host Sam Shad. "I mean, I'm crossing both fingers that maybe I'm wrong about that."

Many state lawmakers are concerned that the push in the Republican-controlled Congress to cut spending could mean less money for Nevada for Medicaid, health insurance for children, food assistance, highway construction, grants for k-12 and higher education, staffing and maintenance of public parks and various other programs.

Yeager, a Democrat from Las Vegas, said he is preparing for the late-year special session but hopes the various political campaigns before the general election in early November will help save Nevada's federal funding.

"Maybe there's some sense of normalcy there," he said. "I mean, congresspeople and senators have to run for re-election and slashing a bunch of services to all their constituents right before an election is not good. But yeah, I'm still preparing for that (special session)."

Federal funds make up 27.7 percent of the current Nevada two-year budget, according to the non-partisan Kenny Guinn Center for Policy Priorities. Nevada has $14.8 billion in federal funds in its current overall budget of $53.4 billion, according to the Guinn Center.

The White House's Office of Management and Budget, and Congress, both work on a fiscal year that starts on October 1 and ends September 30, which may be the reason Yeager mentioned September and October for a possible special session.

Yeager mentioned a special session about federal funding two other times in the interview.

* When asked about the possibility of a special session right after the 2025 regular session to consider $100 million or more in film tax credits for a planned movie studio in Las Vegas, Yeager said:

"I would not relish going into a special session either right away or later on (for the movie studio bill), knowing that we're probably going to be in one on the budget side anyway," he said.

* He mentioned it again, when speaking about Nevada's $1.3 billion Rainy Day Fund:

"Well, we're definitely going to need the Rainy Day Fund if we end
up in a special session (about federal funding)," he said. "There's no doubt about it."

Ending the regular session

Yeager, however, is confident lawmakers can end the current regular session by June 2, the last scheduled day of the 2025 Legislature, and avoid an immediate special session to finish business.

He praised lawmakers' hard work, saying they're fatigued, want to finish and go home.

"We're going to get out on time, I believe so," he said. "There's no reason we shouldn't get out on time."

However, one issue looms that could possibly send lawmakers into overtime, Yeager said.

"The only complication is we just got the governor's education bill and that is a massive bill with a lot of concepts," Yeager said. "I don't know how many sections (it has). I think it's 175 pages. So we only have two weeks to work on that."

There's a lot to do to fully understand the governor's entire education package, Yeager added.

"So I'm a little worried because two weeks isn't a lot of time to be able to get a handle on what's in there and where we agree," Yeager said. "But that being said, I think we're in a good place to be able to end on time. As long as communication stays open and people can just let water be water-under-the-bridge when folks are upset, then I think we have a good chance of getting out on time."

To keep communication open, Yeager said he, Lombardo and State Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro have been meeting for lunch on Wednesdays.

"Usually (we meet for) about an hour, but sometimes we go two hours," Yeager said. "I mean, we're trying to tackle the big issues, right? And those are issues that we're all concerned about -- housing, education, health care, economic development and the budget. So I think we are getting to a good place."

Rainy Day Fund logic

Yeager doesn't want to put anymore money in the $1.3 billion Rainy Day Fund, for now.

"There are automatic transfers that go into the Rainy Day Fund at the end of every legislative session," Yeager said. "So there's a transfer that is scheduled to be made that is around $300 million-plus.

"And I think the question is, does it make sense to be transferring more money into the Rainy Day Fund, given the budget situation that we're in now?" Yeager continued.

"The answer is probably no," he continued. "So I wouldn't so much see it as pulling money out of the Rainy Day Fund," he said. "Technically, maybe it is, but it's more suspending the transfer that was supposed to be made because the Rainy Day Fund is at $1.3 billion right now, and I think getting us to $1.6 billion at the exclusion of being able to have a balanced budget and fund some of these programs, probably is not the right thing to do right now."

Stopping the next scheduled payment into the Rainy Day Fund may be a bipartisan idea, since Republican Senate Minority Leader Robin Titus mentioned something very similar last week on Nevada Newsmakers.

Raises for charter-school teachers

Earlier this month a Democratically-controlled budget committee rejected Gov. Joe Lombardo’s request for raises for charter school educators, while giving raises to teachers in traditional schools in Nevada's 17 school districts.

Yeager then introduced a bill to give charter-school teachers raises via another mechanism. He added Democrats were never against raises for charter-school teachers, just the way Lombardo's bill gave it to them.

"I want to be clear, we rejected the way in which the governor wanted to do the raises," Yeager said. "The senate majority leader and I have been clear all session that we wanted to find a way to do charter-school raises. We just didn't like the way that it was being proposed in the budget because it was just handing the money to the charter schools without any sort of accountability of how many teachers you have, how many education-support professionals you have and how big are the raises going to be. So, we made that decision to reject the way the governor proposed it."

Yeager said he didn't realize the charter-school teacher raise issue was so important to Lombardo.

"He did not communicate to us, during our discussions, that this was a huge issue to him," Yeager said. "He talked about it in his State of the State speech, but that was months ago now.

"So, you know, after that (budget committee vote) happened, we reached out to the governor and just said, 'We're going to get this figured out.'

"It was important to me that this wasn't something we were going to fight about in the media," Yeager said. "So I proposed a way of doing it that provides some accountability and provides some transparency.

"I think the governor's going to be on board with that," Yeager continued. "I've had some good discussions with him about that concept, so I'm really hopeful we can get there."