Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review. As I sit writing this, the Nevada Legislature is getting ready to wrap up its second day of the 2019 legislative session.
I’m always really excited by the start of a new session. I cut my teeth in journalism as a master’s student covering the 2013 session for the University of Nevada Reno’s Reynolds School of Journalism, and I’ve covered the two sessions since.
Along the way, I’ve had the opportunity to meet not just legislators and lobbyists but also my fellow Nevadans—everyday folks who make their way to the capitol to speak in favor or against pieces of proposed legislation that affect them directly. (If you’d like info on how to follow those hearings online, go to www.leg.state.nv.us/universalaccess.htm.)
This year is, of course, particularly exciting considering the Nevada Legislature is the first in the nation to have a female majority. I’m baffled by states like Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, where only about 15 percent of state legislators are female. But Nevada has long had strong female legislators. I’m thinking of women like Shelley Berkley, Jill Derby, Chris Giunchigliani, Dina Titus, the RN&R’s own Shelia Leslie, Frankie Sue Del Papa, Sue Wagner, Debbie Smith Jan Evans and Jan Jones, to name just a few.
I hope all of this year’s legislators—male and female, new and experienced—will keep in mind all of the good work that was done by the state’s female legislators who came before.