Storey County pushes SB69 to require local government services talks, add fire districts to abatement negotiations

Storey County officials told the Assembly Committee on Revenue on the evening they presented Senate Bill 69 that the bill would require earlier notification to local jurisdictions and allow local governments — including fire protection districts — to negotiate government services agreements to offset local costs created by very large tax‑abatement projects.

"They change your life. They change the culture of your county," said Austin Osborne, Storey County manager, describing the county’s decade of experience hosting gigafactories and the local service needs that followed. "This bill simply amends the existing structure. It brings local stakeholders to the table while GOED works through its processes."

The bill targets two large abatement categories in Nevada Revised Statutes (NRS) tied to projects with roughly $1,000,000,000 and $3,500,000,000 capital investments. Supporters described past negotiations with private companies that produced government services agreements (GSAs) to fund local needs — for example, Storey officials said the county negotiated roughly $26,000,000 in services to respond to its first Tesla gigafactory over a 10‑year abatement period, and cited GSA amounts of about $12 million for earlier projects.

Supporters said SB69 (as amended during bill development) would: require GOED to notify local jurisdictions when an abatement application is received; give a jurisdiction 15 days to request negotiation of a GSA and be read into nondisclosure agreements; allow negotiations to proceed concurrently with GOED’s abatement process; and explicitly permit fire protection districts to participate in negotiations. "We were the only fire protection district in the state of Nevada that has dealt with this, yet we were not awarded the same rights that a city or a county fire department received," said Jeremy Longcar, chief of the Storey County Fire Protection District. Longcar told committee members the district has borne costs responding to industrial incidents and has had difficulty securing funds or equipment without being able to negotiate GSAs.

Committee members pressed presenters on the bill’s caps and guardrails. Storey County officials said the bill includes caps that limit recoverable local costs to either a percentage cap (10% for the $1 billion category, 20% for the $3.5 billion category) or to demonstrable, itemized costs — whichever yields less. "Our original bill did not have those caps," Storey County manager Austin Osborne said. He said the caps were added as guardrails after stakeholder requests and that the numeric limits were informed by Storey County’s real‑world GSA experience.

Several county, city and business groups testified in opposition or urged amendment. Stephen Wood, director of strategy and public policy for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED), said GOED opposed SB69 in its current form and that GOED had proposed an amendment the sponsors had not adopted at the hearing. Wood told the committee that GOED’s draft would reduce the 20% cap to 10% for the $3.5 billion abatement example and estimated that using the local portion only would produce a lower dollar example (roughly $33 million vs. $66 million in the full‑amount scenario he cited). Wood said GOED would support the bill if the parties accepted its amendment.

Local governments and business groups raised concerns that the bill’s language could be overly prescriptive or could deter large projects. The Nevada League of Cities and multiple municipal chambers said the bill could reduce local flexibility to tailor agreements. The Vegas Chamber and other statewide business groups urged the committee to accept GOED’s compromise amendment; several witnesses said they would change to neutral if the GOED amendment were accepted.

Supporters argued SB69 increases certainty and speed by allowing local concerns to be addressed while the abatement application is processed rather than after GOED has largely completed its review. "This actually gives more certainty and speed," Storey County Commissioner Clay Mitchell told the committee, saying the local process can run concurrently with GOED review and that jurisdictional opt‑in remains voluntary.

The committee did not take a vote on SB69 at the hearing. The record shows substantial stakeholder engagement but unresolved differences: proponents emphasized inclusion of fire districts and early notification, while GOED, city associations and several business groups urged the sponsors to accept GOED’s amendment to narrow caps and other language. The hearing closed without final action and committee members indicated they expected additional conversation between sponsors and GOED.

Votes at this hearing: none recorded.