AB340 Testimony (State level REINS Act)
re: Testimony in Support of Assembly Bill 340 of the 2021 Nevada Legislature
Members of the Assembly Committee on Government Affairs:
NPRI strongly supports Assembly Bill 340 and urges each member of this committee to do the same.
This bill, from a taxpayer’s perspective, is desperately needed. The status quo suffers from a lack of legislative oversight regarding some of our state’s most costly expenditures. Assemblyman Matthews’ proposal seeks to remedy this by prohibiting state agencies from implementing the most costly of these measures unilaterally—essentially injecting a legislative and gubernatorial “check” against an ever-expanding administrative state.
By requiring both the legislature’s and the governor’s explicit authorization of any regulatory appropriation in excess of $10,000,000, this bill will curb the rate at which the administrative state has grown in recent years and promote cost-efficient solutions.
While, unfortunately, the federally-proposed REINS Act—after which AB340 is modeled—has not been enacted, the state of Wisconsin implemented its own REINS Act in 2017. In other words, this concept is neither novel nor untested.
Government has a fundamental obligation to its taxpayers to limit wasteful and unaccountable spending wherever possible. AB340 simply provides an appropriate tool for that purpose.
Respectfully,