The Perfect Example of Government Gone Wrong
Picture this: A government board that can’t even maintain a website. A board that’s racked up significant debt. A board that spends your tax dollars on travel expenses. A board that didn’t have written policies for decades.
And this board exists to regulate exactly 48 people in the entire state of Nevada.
Welcome to the Nevada Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners. It’s the perfect poster child for everything wrong with government in the Silver State.
The Ultimate Government Irony
Here’s what makes this even more absurd. The broader medical establishment and government agencies don’t recognize homeopathy as legitimate medicine. Yet Nevada still created an entire licensing board to regulate it.
Think about that for a moment. The state is spending money to license practitioners of something the mainstream medical community doesn’t even acknowledge as real medicine. It’s like creating a Department of Unicorn Regulation – except the unicorn department would probably have a working website.
This perfectly shows how government bureaucracy works: Create boards for everything, collect fees from everyone, and defend the system forever: even when you don’t officially believe in what you’re regulating.
What Happened This Year
Gov. Joe Lombardo tried to fix this mess. In January, Lombardo said in his State of the State address that the system should be “smart, lean and productive.” His Department of Business and Industry (B&I) proposed SB78, a bill that would have eliminated this useless board entirely.
It seemed like common sense. Why does Nevada need a whole government board to regulate 48 people? The Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners, for example, which currently only has 48 licensees to sustain it and, again, isn’t even able to maintain a website, would be eliminated entirely.
But guess what happened? The board and its allies killed the reform. Several proposals, including a comprehensive reform package brought by B&I and other last-minute deals, failed to garner enough legislative support before the session ended on June 2.
That’s right. A board that can’t even run a website successfully lobbied against its own elimination.
The Bigger Picture: Nevada’s Shadow Government
This isn’t just about homeopaths. It’s about how Nevada has creaed a shadow goverment that the Department of Business and Industry has called a ‘de facto fourth branch of government, operating with minimal oversight.'”
Think about that phrase: “de facto fourth branch of government.” We’re supposed to have three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. But Nevada has created a fourth branch made up of unelected boards that answer to nobody.
How many boards are we talking about? According to a recent policy paper released by the Department of Business and Industry, Nevada now has more than 315 boards, commissions and advisory councils.
That’s 315 little fiefdoms, each with their own budgets, their own rules, and their own political agendas.
How They Protect Themselves
Here’s where it gets really outrageous. These boards don’t just regulate professions: they hire lobbyists to protect their turf. The boards’ budgets are funded through fees paid by licensees, with annual revenue upward of $5 million for some of the largest boards, and they can hire independent lobbyists.
So you’ve got government boards using the money they collect from workers to hire lobbyists to fight against government reform. It’s like the fox hiring security guards to protect the henhouse.
When SB78 came up for a vote, guess what happened? Sen. James Ohrenschall (D-Las Vegas) basically said as much before voting against the proposal when he explained that he had received “so many emails, so many phone calls from so many different boards and members.”
The boards flooded legislators with calls and emails to protect their own existence. And it worked.
The Real-World Cost
This isn’t just about bureaucratic waste. It’s about real people trying to make a living. Nevada remains the most burdensome state in the nation for obtaining occupational licenses, according to research.
That means if you want to start a business, switch careers, or just find work, Nevada makes it harder than any other state in America. You have to get permission from government boards to do jobs that shouldn’t require government permission.
The failed reform would have helped workers directly. The department estimates that these changes could save Nevada’s licensees over $15 million annually. That’s $15 million that could have stayed in workers’ pockets instead of feeding the bureaucracy.
What the Boards Really Do
Let’s talk about accountability. An audit conducted by the Division of Internal Audits in 2018 found at least four boards were paying staff higher salaries than state workers were receiving at the time.
Even worse, some boards completely ignore the law. The Nevada State Board of Pharmacy, for example, failed to conduct background checks on wholesale pharmacy companies for more than a decade.
So we have boards that pay themselves more than regular state workers and then don’t even do their basic jobs. But they still hire lobbyists to make sure nobody can eliminate them.
What Comes Next
Lombardo deserves credit for trying. But this fight shows the power of entrenched interests. It seems far more likely it died under the weight of a bloated bureaucratic class that benefits from maintaining the status quo.
The question is: Will conservatives learn from this defeat? Will they understand that you can’t just elect a Republican governor and expect the swamp to drain itself?
These 315 boards aren’t going anywhere unless voters demand accountability. They’ve got lobbyists, they’ve got money, and they’ve got legislators who are afraid to stand up to them.
What You Can Do
First, pay attention to your local boards. Most people don’t even know they exist, which is exactly how the boards like it.
Second, demand transparency. The department plans to require monthly profit and loss statements from each board, which will be publicly accessible on their website. But only if reform actually happens.
Third, support candidates who understand that small government means eliminating unnecessary boards, not just talking about it.
The Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners might seem like a small issue. But it’s a perfect example of how government grows, how special interests capture regulatory power, and how bureaucracy protects itself from reform.
If we can’t eliminate a board that regulates 48 people and can’t maintain a website, how can we ever hope to shrink government in areas that really matter?
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Nevada News & Views. This article was written with the assistance of AI. Please verify information and consult additional sources as needed.
