Faraday Future special session of Nevada Legislature cost a quarter million dollars

When all the bills are finally in, the 29th special session of the Legislature to workout the Faraday Future deal will have cost just shy of $250,000.

Legislative Counsel Bureau Director Rick Combs said as of this week, total costs are $227,097.47.

But, Combs said, that doesn’t include printing costs. In comparison, Combs said printing for the Tesla session, totaled at about $13,000. He said printing for the Faraday session will be higher because their were more bills needed for the Faraday deal.

Also, Combs said there may be a couple of lawmakers who haven’t turned in their travel vouchers yet.

“It will be just about $250,000 when we’re done,” he said.

The purpose of the session was to provide Faraday Future tax and other incentives to build a $1 billion auto manufacturing plant at the Apex Industrial Center in North Las Vegas.

The special session for Tesla cost $134,000. Combs pointed out the Tesla session ran two days while the Faraday session ran just about four days.

The money to pay for it, Combs said, came out of the Legislative Fund, the legislative branch reserve account, not out of the General Fund.

Fully $140,000 of that total went for salaries of the temporary staff brought in to handle the Senate and Assembly floor sessions and provide support for lawmakers plus the overtime accrued by both temporary and regular full-time LCB staff in the legal, fiscal and other divisions. Of that total, $117,000 was overtime.

Combs said the overtime cost there was increased significantly by the fact the Faraday session ran into Saturday, putting nearly all regular and temporary staff on overtime.

A total of $32,184 was paid out in legislative salaries. In addition, the 41 Assembly members and 20 Senators who attended received $30,800 in per diem payments along with $16,294 in travel — mostly by southern lawmakers to get to Carson City.

Travel, Combs said, was offset a bit by the fact getting members of the Interim Finance Committee to Carson City on the first day of the special session was billed to IFC, not the special session.

Another $1,251 in travel was spent bringing specialized staff to Carson City from the south.

The special session did, however, generate a small amount of revenue. LCB collected $6,560 in fees from lobbyists who attended the four-day session.

When it was all done, lawmakers and Gov. Brian Sandoval provided Faraday with $213 million in tax breaks plus about $120 million in infrastructure and other improvements at Apex for a total of about $333 million.

The projected economic impact of the auto plant was estimated at $55 billion over the next 20 years.