Nevada Republican defends small landlords as Democrats push rent increase caps for seniors, fee disclosures
Assembly Bill 280 (AB280) passed the Assembly on a 27-15 vote on April 22, and is now being considered in the Senate. The bill, sponsored by Democratic Assembly Majority Leader Sandra Jauregui, is likely to be vetoed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo if it gets that far.
The 5% cap on rent increases is set up as a pilot program running from July 1, 2025, to Dec. 31, 2026.
Republicans came to the defense of small business operators — landlords who rent out their homes — who face more regulation because of the abuses of corporations that game the system to overcharge renters any way they can think up.
There's little argument between Democrats and Republicans about stopping the practices that have come to light. But Republicans are adamant that new regulations shouldn't burden Nevadans who operate as small landlords.
A large part of AB280 takes aim at hidden fees in massive lease agreements crafted by corporate landlords. The bill would require concise disclosure of all fees so that renters can easily see what they will actually be paying.
'There are two ways we see consumers impacted by fees,' according to Jonathan Norman of the Nevada Coalition of Legal Service Providers. 'I would just lump them into 'bogus fees' and 'deceptive fees.' A bogus fee would be a fee for something a landlord is already obligated to provide or shouldn't be charging for.
'A deceptive fee is when a landlord spreads the fees out throughout the lease. A fee on page 1, a fee on page 10, a fee on page 45, a fee on page 62, a fee on addendum 1, and so on,' Norman said.
Norman offered a laundry list of the fees 'bogus fees' that have been reported:
Air filter fees
Smoke detector battery change fees
Valet trash fees
Unspecified 'amenity' fees
TV remote control fees
Mandatory cable/internet fees
Fees for paying rent through an online portal
Some fees are a few dollars, but they add up. Cable/internet fees can be over $100 per month, whether the tenant wants them or not. Corporate landlords are reaping big profits, according to Norman.
Invitation Homes, a company that operates in Nevada, was sued by the Federal Trade Commission over some of these practices. Last year, a $48 million settlement was reached. Invitation owns about 3,000 homes in Clark County.
'According to the FTC complaint, just one of their fees, called a 'Lease Easy' fee alone generated $60 million for Invitation Homes between 2021 and 2023,' Norman said.
'We believe in fairness, and businesses should be prohibited from fleecing Nevadans with bogus or hidden fees,' he said.
But there are a lot of players under the broad 'landlord' umbrella.
'There's two sides to every story, and this isn't it,' Republican State Sen. John Ellison said. Renter abuses during the pandemic and policies that protected them cost some small landlords everything, he said.
'I'm worried about the old people that have rentals that are losing everything they've got. And they're not the bad guys,' Ellison said.
He said the fees Norman listed don't occur in mom-and-pop operations. They're just a problem for the bigger apartment complexes, he said.
Norman emphasized the bill doesn't say you can't charge fees, but they must be disclosed fairly on one sheet of paper.
John Sande of the Nevada State Apartment Association spoke in opposition to the bill's rent cap, calling it rent control. He said such measures might be effective in the short term, but carry a lot of implications that are bad for housing in the long run.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Your kid is getting a ‘Trump account.' Should you put your money in it?
Republicans' 'big, beautiful bill' includes a gift to millions of families: $1,000 in an investment account for every eligible newborn. The new savings vehicles, akin to Individual Retirement Accounts, are designated for children who are U.S. citizens born from 2025 through 2028. In addition to the one-time government contribution, parents and others can chip in as much as $5,000 a year to the accounts, which beneficiaries can access at 18, with some constraints. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. The seed money is a boon for recipients and will grow tax-deferred. Financial planners say parents and guardians might do better putting their money into existing investment vehicles such as a 529 plan, a savings plan designed to cover college expenses. But 529s are limited to education, while backers say the new accounts can help their recipients beyond college. Republican lawmakers call the accounts 'Trump accounts,' though the Senate's plan to officially name them after the president did not make it to the final version of the legislation, which was signed Friday. They deliver on an idea that both Democrats and Republicans have floated for years: to invest money for all children at birth. Withdrawals from a 529 are not subject to state or federal taxes as long as the funds go toward qualified education expenses - a feature the new investment accounts don't share. And in the new accounts, parents' deposits don't qualify for a tax deduction, notes Greg Leiserson, a senior fellow at the Tax Law Center at New York University. 'You have this very slight or minimal-to-nonexistent tax benefit,' he said. 'What is the point here?' Financial adviser Amy Spalding of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, said she will continue to steer her clients to 529s. 'It's better from a tax standpoint,' Spalding said. 'And there are more investment options. And then there's a higher contribution limit.' (For 2025, a single person can deposit as much as $19,000 a year into a beneficiary's 529, while married couples can contribute as much $38,000.) Jeremiah Barlow, a financial planner in Santa Barbara, California, said the new accounts could benefit a family that has hit the maximum on their child's 529 and wants to save more, or who like the idea of setting up a fund for their child's first home or as an economic safety net. 'It would likely appeal to our families who want more flexibility for more general-purpose savings for their child's future,' Barlow said. 'You shouldn't rush to just use it because it's out there.' Leiserson cautioned that account holders should understand the tax implications, noting that withdrawals will be taxed at typical income rates, not at the capital gains rate of a taxable brokerage account. 'For most people, this is going to be worse than what they could do in a taxable account,' he said. Though parents don't get a tax deduction when they contribute to a new account, employers can claim a tax break for contributions on behalf of their workers' children or their teenage employees. Nonprofits also can contribute to they accounts. The law requires the new investment accounts to track a U.S. stock index, which means account holders have fewer options than they would in a brokerage account or a 529 plan, which generally offer a range of investment options with varying levels of risk, including stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Leiserson noted that all-stock portfolios come with their own risks, because they're tethered to market conditions. 'If you're saying, 'Okay, I'm going to start school in the fall' - if the market falls over the summer, the planning you were doing about how you were going to pay for college is totally messed up, because the money you thought would be there, isn't." The White House said the accounts 'will afford a generation of children the chance to experience the miracle of compounded growth and set them on a course for prosperity from the very beginning.' While some experts appreciate the premise of the accounts, they also see flaws in the design, such as the requirement that parents opt-in to the account on their tax return, which means people who don't know this might miss out. In addition, the law includes a penalty of at least $500 if a parent mistakenly claims an account, which could scare off some parents. During the grinding process of crafting the massive tax and spending legislation, the accounts changed both superficially - they were renamed from MAGA accounts to Trump accounts to a yet-to-be-determined name - and in substance. Legislators dropped plans to give account withdrawals favorable tax treatment similar to a brokerage account. Account withdrawals will be taxed at ordinary income tax rates, not capital gains rates. Congress also discarded rules that would have prescribed how beneficiaries could spend the money - on college at 18, on starting a business at 25, on buying a house at 30. Instead, account holders cannot touch the funds until they turn 18. After that, the rules are the same as those of an individual retirement account - withdrawals are taxed like income, plus an additional 10 percent tax penalty on any withdrawals before age 59½ except for certain qualified uses. Those uses include paying for college, supporting themselves if they become disabled, or recovering from domestic abuse or a natural disaster. Beneficiaries also can withdraw as much as $10,000 to buy their first home, and up to $5,000 when they have a new baby themselves. Even one of the Trump accounts' biggest proponents in Congress, Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), said in an interview that for many parents, the new account design offers more benefits for retirement than for college expenses. 'I would argue that the tax implications of a 529 are far more favorable,' he said, but noted that most families don't have the disposable income to invest in a 529, and the new accounts' $1,000 from the government can benefit people at all income levels. If the account saw a 6 percent rate of return for 18 years, it would be worth $2,854; if the stock market does well, it could be worth even more. 'The most beneficial thing in my opinion about these is that … you're investing from birth into an IRA,' Moore said. 'Most people start investing in an IRA at 30 …. We're talking at birth or at 30. The benefits of investing early into that IRA are significant.' Moore has four sons, and while none will qualify for the government's $1,000 seed money contribution for newborns, the law allows him to open a Trump account as a parent. He says he'll be putting money in it: 'I want my kids having a Trump account so they can take it out when they're 50 or 60 years old.' - - - Jacob Bogage contributed to this report. Related Content Arthur Ashe's knack for reinvention led him to history at Wimbledon Newlywed detained by ICE freed after 141 days and two deportation attempts The Met opens a dazzling wing of non-European art Sign in to access your portfolio
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
To tame Washington, we need a DOGE 2.0 — but done right this time
Elon Musk has repeatedly achieved the impossible, but not even he and his Department of Government Efficiency could tame Washington, DC, and its massive federal bureaucracy. Yet there's still hope — and the need has never been more urgent. The Senate parliamentarian gutted major cost savings at the heart of the Republican reconciliation bill that President Donald Trump signed Friday, so he must resume DOGE efforts immediately. Advertisement In Silicon Valley terms, DOGE had product-market fit; it just didn't have the right tech stack. This time, the White House must get the architecture right. Step 1 is understanding what went wrong. DOGE's failures stemmed from three fundamental flaws that doomed the effort from the start. The first was structural. Don Devine, who ran the Office of Personnel Management for President Ronald Reagan, warned that creating a new agency to shrink government never works — it only causes confusion, diffusion of responsibility and more bureaucracy. Advertisement It also ignores that in Washington, the coin of the realm is power. DOGE was a new agency made up out of thin air with zero inherent legal authority — and Cabinet secretaries naturally bristled at an outside third party meddling in their agencies. They wanted to control the change, and they possessed the legal authority to do so. Indeed, as secretaries were confirmed, they moved quickly to throw off DOGE's yoke. Advertisement By late February, Musk faced a revolt as top officials countermanded DOGE's 'five weekly accomplishments' order. An 'explosive' Cabinet meeting in early March ended with Trump telling Musk to make changes with a scalpel, not a hatchet. Musk's second problem was a legal one. Private-sector experience can't prepare anyone for the labyrinth of administrative law that liberal activists use to stymie progress. DOGE lacked a dedicated legal team within the Justice Department focused solely on its policy reforms and preventing unforced errors. For example, DOGE lowered NIH's cap on allowable research overhead from 69% to 15%, explaining that private foundations allow for zero such funding — but it made the cap retroactive, jeopardizing the reform in court. Advertisement The third sin was flash. Even as DOGE's publicity invited legal challenges, it increased the pressure to meet publicly proclaimed, wildly optimistic targets. DOGE's $1 trillion in promised cuts will strain to hit $150 billion. We had a saying in the White House during Trump's first term, and it proved true here: Whales that surface get harpooned. Musk acknowledged as much on X last week, admitting that his attention-getting antics 'lacked empathy.' Fortunately, the source code exists to reengineer the DOGE mission with bold, swift, high-impact moves. The White House must implement three critical components to make DOGE 2.0 work. First, empower Cabinet control: The White House should give Cabinet secretaries direction, then let them make reforms themselves. Trump must give each Cabinet member mandatory workforce reduction goals, the same way tech sales teams have strict quotas. Faced with a requirement, for example, to trim 25% within six months, agency heads will snap into action — and will feel personal responsibility for performance. The federal government works best when it functions as designed, with the president — not a third party — telling his Cabinet what to do. Advertisement Second, the White House must assemble a dedicated legal defense team within the Justice Department focused solely on reform policies, and get each agency's general counsel on board with the effort. These lawyers will catch pitfalls early — and will go the extra mile to defend policies they helped write. For example, these lawyers must aggressively demand injunction bonds to rein in activists' district-court lawfare. Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! Advertisement When the Supreme Court ended universal injunctions last week, it left activist judges a 'significant loophole' in the class-action realm. DOJ lawyers should head this off by demanding that plaintiffs pay injunction bonds — upfront money to cover costs should they lose. Finally, DOGE 2.0 must execute in Stealth Mode. Follow the example of the Obama administration, which initially pursued amnesty for undocumented aliens by relaxing enforcement via phone calls, without making a public announcement. This made it much harder for Congress to learn what was happening — or to attack it in court. Advertisement The same quiet execution model applies here: Trump must pursue smart, quiet rollouts, not splashy launches. This was the model my former boss John McEntee used to reform personnel in Trump's first term. He used the authorities inherent in the White House to hold the Cabinet accountable, placed dedicated lawyers in key positions of authority and operated off-the-record. It was a successful model and should be deployed again. Advertisement Watching Musk leave Washington in frustration brings to mind the Roman historian Livy. As the Republic collapsed, he lamented: 'We can endure neither our vices nor the remedies needed to cure them.' America need not repeat Rome's fate — but only if we abandon failed approaches and embrace methods that actually work. The clock is ticking. Daniel Huff is a former White House lawyer in the Office of Presidential Personnel, and was a senior advisor to Project 2025.
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Mark Green resigns from Congress to take mystery job — narrowing Republicans' threadbare majority
Tennessee Rep. Mark Green announced that he has resigned from Congress to take a new mysterious new job — narrowing Republicans' already ultra-slim majority by one seat ahead of messy fights such as the looming government shutdown battle in the fall. The retired US Army officer had revealed his intention to step down last month after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but had refrained from giving an exact date. On Friday, he tendered his resignation, which is effective July 20, per his letter to GOP leadership. 'It's with a heavy heart that I say farewell,' Green said in a statement. 'To my constituents across Tennessee's 7th District—thank you. The trust you put in me is humbling. I will look back fondly on my years of serving as your voice in Washington.' 'While I cannot give the details here, I will be doing something specifically designed to help America compete against the CCP [Chinese Communist Party], but this time in business,' Green explained in his resignation video. Shortly after his announcement last month that he intended to leave Congress, Notus reported that Green had been floating business opportunities in Guyana to lobbyists. Now that he is stepping aside, Republicans will have a 219-212 majority in the House. 3 Mark Green had said he wouldn't step down from the House until Republicans passed their megabill. Getty Images But that is set to further shrink when Democrats fill three vacancies for reps that died earlier this year during special elections in the fall. Democrats are heavily favored to reclaim all three of those seats. Eventually, there will be a special election to replace Green, who had won Sen. Marsha Blackburn's (R-Tenn.) old House seat in 2018. Blackburn is now eyeing a potential run for Tennessee governor. Green was also the chairman of the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, which played a critical role in developing the border security provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that cleared the House last week. 3 The Tennessee Republican has been tight-lipped about his next job. X/@RepMarkGreen With the Tennessee rep stepping down, Republican leadership will have even less room for error during key fights coming up later this year, such as a potentially nasty government shutdown showdown in the fall when Congress has to fund the government for the next fiscal year. His departure also makes the math harder for other GOP goals, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) plan to pursue another reconciliation bill later this year — the legislative vehicle Republicans used to wrangle the One Big Beautiful Bill Act without Democratic support. The Tennessee Republican declined to provide details of his next gig in the private sector. 3 Republicans are not set to have a slimmer 219–212 House majority. CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Last September, Green drew national headlines after his wife accused him of having an affair. She filed for divorce and alleged that he was having a dalliance with a woman employed by Axios. She later admitted to misidentifying the purported mistress, telling Politico, 'I want to correct the record, because I misidentified someone in that message. My husband has never had a relationship with a reporter from Axios, and I regret having said that.' The retired U.S. Army officer had previously announced that he wouldn't pursue another term in the 2024 election cycle, but abruptly changed course about 15 days later.
