Inside Nevada Politics: From Mining to Fuel Wars | Jobbers - American Energy Ep. 6

Inside Nevada Politics: From Mining to Fuel Wars

In this episode of Jobbers: American Energy, host Jason Case sits down with Miranda Hoover, the dynamic state executive for Nevada’s energy and convenience industry. From her early days in Reno to her pivotal role shaping legislation and advocating for small businesses, Miranda unpacks a journey filled with grit, policy battles, and purpose. This episode explores what it really takes to navigate energy politics in Nevada, the legacy of the commerce tax fight, and why refining access could be the next frontier for the Western fuel supply chain.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Nevada’s mining laws lead the nation in bonding and reclamation requirements
• Miranda's family background shaped her path into business and healthcare policy
• The 2015 commerce tax controversy still haunts Nevada’s legislative memory
• Logistics experience provided real-world fuel and diesel knowledge
• Nevada’s fuel supply depends dangerously on California’s refining capacity
• Session politics derailed key energy and vape enforcement bills
• Miranda helped rebrand the state association to better reflect energy diversity
• The Jobbers community fights to preserve business viability amid rising regulation
• Public education is key to shifting narratives around gas prices and convenience stores
• Global conflict directly impacts fuel costs and energy strategy in Nevada

BEST MOMENTS
00:04:30. “Well, it's a pretty funny, roundabout story. Nothing in my life really has been that linear...”
00:06:17. “Unless you are going to be studying seven days a week, 24 hours a day, this is not the room for you.”
00:07:17. “I was the youngest person ever hired to work in the Senate Majority Leader's office...”
00:25:01. “Even if you didn’t hit that $4 million threshold, you were still required to file.”
00:35:15. “They fired all their managers just out of the blue... I got to help them revise their emergency room policy for the first time in 20 years.”
00:47:46. “You have to have the funding and the backing to put up your bond to say if this mine fails… you're going to clean it up, but you will make it safe.”
01:03:07. “We're probably the most transparently priced industry out there.”
01:27:47. “Trying to outlaw fuel doesn't make any sense. Minimum for the next 100 years, this truly is the best and cleanest source of energy we have.”

Thank you for listening to Jobbers: American Energy, the podcast that captures the real, unscripted stories of the people powering America’s fuel and energy industries. Every month, we go beyond the headlines to share the grit, leadership, and legacy of the workers who keep this country running.

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🛢️ Jobbers: American Energy is hosted by Jason Case, the CEO of ROC, a third-generation family-run wholesale energy distribution company. Learn more about Jason and the work behind the show at www.jobberspodcast.com/about.

Real people. Real stories. Real American energy.

Transcript

0:00

You have to have the funding and the backing to put up your bond to say if this mine fails, or even when we decide to close it, you're going to clean it up, but you won't make it safe. We're really excited to take this association to the next level, which is educating the public. Why are gas prices so high? And most of them don't understand that it's not the convenience store who's setting the price. They finally call for the vote. Again, this vote has to be by push of a button. Every single senator in that chamber push their button, except for one sole Republican senator. Welcome to jobs American Energy, the podcast that tells the untold stories of the people powering America. I'm your host, Jason Case, and each month we go beyond headlines to meet the folks keeping our country running one job at a time. Let's get into it. Randall Hoover, thank you for doing this. Thanks for joining the pod. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. I appreciate it. Just a quick overview. I'd like to start. I always do with a quick brain warmup. Just some fun questions for the audience to get to know you. Then I'll get into your bio. And from there, we'll kind of discuss what led you into being the state executive for Nevada, the recent shenanigans at the Nevada state legislator, and then some of the current events that are going on. I love it. Let's do. It. Are you a morning person or a night owl? Definitely a morning person. Okay. Early bird catches the worm. I agree. What is your favorite restaurant in Reno, Nevada? Land. Ocean is up there. But I also love all Mexican food. So el Adobe, and a sucker. Yeah, all about it. I have a funny story for you about land, ocean and Peter Krueger off the Port Authority there. I believe. Whatever you're gonna tell me. All right, I'll ask this. It's a little modification. Usually, I like to know what your favorite TV show or movie is, but I think you're more of a podcast fan. So what is one of the podcast that you listen to regularly? So my number one podcast at the moment is called The Big Deal Podcast by Cody Sanchez. She is actually a very good friend of one of my very good friends, which is how I got introduced to her about four or so years ago. She launched her podcast just within the last year, and I am absolutely obsessed with that. So anybody that is a current business owner wants to be a business owner, is looking to buy other businesses. Listen to that. I've actually just by following you on social, I've caught some of their stuff and it looks pretty cool. A lot of Las Vegas businesses that she's promoted recently. If you like that one, there's a one that I listen to called acquired. It's about like it'll tell you about the kind of early onset, Amazon or when they got into like data centers and things like that. So it kind of tells you like typically a struggle of a large business before they actually become a significantly large business. So that's a good one as well. All right. This one's more related to current events. In your opinion. What happens to the price of oil after the US attacks on Iranian nuclear infrastructure? Well, anybody really with, common sense? Generally it would be going up with the United States just not having as much energy infrastructure currently firing on all cylinders. Yet I want to say yet that we're still pretty beholden to what other countries are doing at the moment, but hoping that's going to change pretty soon. Yeah, a global war and a bunch of chaos kicking off would definitely hurt the initiative of the Trump administration. I don't think that's his goal. I hope it isn't. Wars cracking off all over the world isn't going to be good for the economy or for the agenda. No it's not. Now I'm just going to kick it off by providing a brief overview. Brief of your personal and professional background. Born in Reno, Nevada. Born, raised. And I still live there. Okay. You received your bachelor's degree in public health from the University of Nevada, and then you went on to receive your master's degree in business administration and health care policy from UNR. You've worked a wide range of professional experience, including health care, logistics, mining, petroleum, government affairs, you're currently the co-founder and managing director of three C House, which focuses on lobbying, media and digital marketing. Fair. Yep. And economic. Development. You're the current successor, to the wonderful Peter Kruger as the Ecan Nevada State Executive. And most importantly, you're a big advocate for the hard working men and women in downstream energy and our convenience store industries in Nevada. So thank. You. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate you doing this. Can you tell us what was it like growing up in Reno and how did you end up becoming the state executive for Nevada? Well, it's a pretty funny, roundabout story. Nothing in my life really has been that linear, which I think just adds to the breadth of fun and experience and amazing people that I've gotten to just meet over the years. But I'm the oldest of five kids. All of my siblings still live in Reno to your still in college. And my dad has been a serial small business owner, my entire life. And he started that really even early into his 20s. And my mom, a nurse, always has been. And so it's been fun growing up in a household where we have a small business side, someone who's legitimately signing the front of paychecks with dozens and dozens of employees over the years. And then from my mom's side, health care, working in a very corporate structure. And so that was always really fun, as my parents never said, you must believe this way or you must think this way. It was laying out situations and examples of, you know, even politics at that time, or current events happening or even things going on in their life and, and work, and they would kind of lay it out for us and we would have a conversation about it, and they would essentially let us decide what we believed or what we thought was kind of the right path, given the tools that they gave us growing up. And, you know, showing us the right way, not just always telling us. So that was just a really good framework for me as I got older and had a true passion and still do for small business, economic development, growth. You know, taking care of your family, health care, all of those kind of different aspects. And so I initially thought I was going to go to medical school or be a nurse, showed up to my very first orientation day at the University of Nevada, Reno, or nursing, walked into a classroom of probably 40 other people. And the coordinator says, unless you are going to be studying seven days a week, 24 hours a day, this is not the room for you. And I went. Not me. I'm out. I'm done. I love getting to do tons of different things. Kind of all at the same time. I don't like to be pigeonholed into one thing. I can't, I can't do it. I can't be tied down. And so I knew that that wasn't the right path for me. So I was trying to figure out the best way to bring my love for business and my eventual real love and passion for political stuff, which really for me is more policy based. Yeah, and people and health care into one realm. And so that's what I decided to pursue. Public health, which really is a policy, data driven type, health care outcomes and figuring out how current, current events really impact that. And, so that was really fun. And, I graduated actually a year or early from the university, took a semester off to work full time at the Nevada Legislature back in 2015. I was the youngest person ever hired to work in the Senate Majority Leader's office, which thank you, which has since changed. And I love all the people that have come out of that office. But that was a really fun experience. And between starting to work on campaigns in 2012, which was part of my, senior year of high school volunteer requirement, and that's kind of what kicked me off into this now love of policy and policy. One thing if you all. Understood, just a backtrack a second. So it sounds like you definitely have your parents impact on you professionally. Dad, from a business standpoint, mom, from a health care standpoint, probably both. From a current event politics policy standpoint, which one are you more like personally? This is so funny. I have had people in the business world, in the health care world, and then even in the political world, because my dad did run for office many moons ago, who have said, you look a lot like your dad today, or you look a lot like your mom today, you sound a lot like your dad today. You sound a lot like your mom today. And so I really think I'm a pretty good mix of both of them. It depends on the situation, frankly. Depends on the day. But I feel really proud that I do feel very like 5050 of them, which obviously, again, that sways a little bit from day to day. But I mean, we also grew up camping and fishing and going places where there was no cell service all across Nevada and, and California, which we loved. And so getting to spend time with your family as well was really important. And I've also always just been Marianne Green. To me. That's cool. I think about that just because we have little kids now and as they develop, like at first everybody would say that my daughters look more like me. And I'm like, sorry. Now they're looking more like their mom. And I hope that trend continues. Mom's a lot more beautiful than I am, so I hope my girls look like that. But their personalities, like, at times I'm like, oh my gosh, that is so my wife. And then at times she's like, that is your daughter. So you kind of get this mold. And it's just fun to see how that continues to progress as they get older. Absolutely. Well, and it's funny too, because my, my siblings, you know, we'll set around for family dinner, which I'm grateful we do almost every Sunday night. And my dad and I will start talking, you know, politics. And my mom, who now works for the VA, will start telling me updates happening from the national level from the VA, because they do, gets bi weekly phone calls or something nationally, all the way down to everybody that works at the VA across the country. And we'll start talking some policy shifts. And this issue is happening and this person's involved. And I can see all of my siblings just rolling their eyes, like their eyes are in the back of their head. They're so sick and tired they. Don't want to hear it. Politics. And they're like, we hate this. Can you please talk about something else? And so it's it's pretty funny. Gotcha. I can see that. There's, my family. It's interesting because we grew up, not that anybody was involved in politics, but we openly talked about it. I would call it more current events than anything. We didn't get in heated debates. And there people from both sides of the aisle. So for me, I didn't think it was ever taboo to talk about just because I don't get in shouting matches. If I have a disagreement with somebody, I'm like, oh, well, maybe you have a different perspective. I'd like to hear on that, or vice versa. But I've noticed, like with other people, as religion and politics, we don't talk about this on my you can talk about it civilly. You don't have to argue about these things, you know, and you also don't have to like treat it as a debate. You know, if you really want to convince somebody about your position, I feel like just try to plant a seed. Maybe they hear something that they haven't heard before and maybe that can develop down the road as opposed to like, I need to win this debate to prove you wrong. Absolutely. And I very much grew up in that exact same household. We we would we would talk current events and there'd be something on the news. You know, I don't know what the media outlets that we were really watching that I know definitely like ABC and yeah, just all those different things. And I remember sitting on the couch with my dad going, why is this happening? And what's going on here? And like, why does this company not like that company? And, you know, different things like that, but again, allowing the conversation to happen and them to be true discussions and talking about the who, the what and the why and the outcome. And I really think that's made me a better not only person but a better lobbyist, because I love learning from anybody. I don't care where they came from. I don't care what they do, their experience in their their true passions and their opinions about things. Because at the end of the day, you know, I don't care what side of the aisle piece of policy came from. There's always a way to make it better, and you're only going to make it better when all of the stakeholders were at the table. Yeah. And it's kind of a math equation at the end of the day, too. If there's a policy either that you agree or disagree with, you have to get a certain size group on board with that to go anywhere. So screaming at people, hitting them over the head with a hammer, debating them may not be the way to get like a consensus behind a topic, just a good old fashioned heated debate. Respectful debate. So you get introduced to business. You get introduced to politics. You graduate early from there. What's your next progression in your professional career? So at that point, I still was very much of the opinion that I might go to medical school because, you know, unfortunately, at least up at UNR, there was no, you know, kind of beautiful medium for policy and politics meets health care or even business. And a really good friend of mine at the time had just gotten accepted to the Texas Tech medical school, which was, I think what they were doing there is brilliant. Your first year of medical school, you actually join the MBA program, and when you graduate with your medical degree, which it's five years later instead of just four, you walk out, not only with your medical degree, but you walk out with your MBA. To truly start getting physicians to understand more of a business side. I thought that was genius. It's been running full steam ahead ever since, but that's something I wish a school in Nevada had. Or even more of a, you know, go get your MD and then also learn about something else they had. Then started kind of an MD meets like an MBA. And that's what I have, a master's of public administration, which is that policy side. And so as I was meeting with people and kind of trying to figure out what my next move was going to be, do I apply for medical school and take them, or do I go get a, you know, figure out my full time job? Do I do something else? And at the time, just getting out of the 2015 legislative session, I was fortunate enough to meet and become friends with a lot of elected officials all across the state. And friends who, you know, work in health care and the Affordable Care Act, had recently become law. And so there was a lot of conversation and obviously controversy surrounding that. And I just told people, I don't ever want to get into a profession where I'm treating my client or my patient like a number. I want to be able to treat them like a person. And so everyone I talked to had said, I don't quite think becoming a doctor is in your care at the moment because you're going to be treating patient patients for 6 to 7 minutes from the time they walk in. You say your hellos, they tell you what's wrong with them, you make a diagnosis and they walk out, potentially with their prescription, and that's it. And that's not what I wanted. But it was really nice. A dear friend who's a former border agent told me, whether it's in two years or if it's in ten years, if you still want to go to medical school, I will write you your first letter of recommendation. So it's ten years later, not looking for that letter of recommendation. So that was great. But instead I decided to go pursue my MBA, knowing that I could take the policy side and add in the health care side as well as kind of the business side. So all my extra, credits essentially were health care policy specific or business policy specific. And I also was really fortunate because I had I want to say I've been a pretty good student, and during undergrad I had met these professors who, you know, we're doing things well and beyond just the undergraduate level. And so I was actually accepted into a very high level health care policy class my first semester during graduate school, even though technically I didn't have all the credentials to do it. But the professor teaching the class, had asked one of my undergrad professors if I would be okay in it, and she goes 100% five stars. Let her let her do it. And so I got to sit in that class with, four physicians who were all finishing up medical school. They were already out doing residencies all across the state, going and playing, organs and our little small areas of, Ely and Tonopah. A guy who had already gotten his business administration degree but went on to learn about health care. And then a gal who had worked for the county health department for over 30 years who wanted to get her MPA. And so between really the seven of us, I got to sit in my class and learn from all of these different people. And so I did that for two years, right? As I started my master's degree, I actually came into my dad's logistics company. I had told him since I was about 14, I kept saying, I don't know how I'm going to learn to be a business owner or learn about small business, or be able to advocate for small business. Unless I have worked on a small business and I run a small business. And so when I was 21 and I just graduated with my undergrad, my dad, I remember, it was December said to me, okay, January, whatever day it was, you're going to be starting up the company. And so, I started really in sales doing, account management and account executive. I was the only woman working at the company at the time. Definitely the youngest by far. And I just had a blast. And within a year and a half took this, you know, smaller courier company that had just been hit really, really hard through the recession and took it from about a 14 person employee weight company, to a 48 person logistics company where we had a large warehouse. I had landed the first account from the Amazon to post office in the entirety of northern Nevada. And so we had a bunch of big box trucks. We ran 363 days a year, only days off for New Year's and Christmas. I worked all hours of the day and then left for three hours, a couple times a week to go do my master's classes. And then I was right back in the office. And I love that. It was extremely hard, but definitely worth the experience and the people I met. And so then fast forward to, finishing up my master's degree. It's 2018, and I sold my dad's company in April of that year, and I graduated with my masters in May of that year. And my dad was ready to retire. And so we made the mutual decision and I went, I really love this. I've learned a lot, but I'm ready for the next. I'm ready for the next thing iteration. Yeah, I'm ready for the next thing. And so that's really just what kind of push me in getting more involved with NFIB, the National Federation of Independent Business. I got to become the state vice pack chair for a while, get really involved in more small business issues, and then took a little bit of time off, which I had never done before, but it was nice and visited my grandparents and truly spent some time with them. And then I ended up becoming a full time lobbyist. I think towards the end of that year, August, September 2018. And that's where I'm at, Peter Kruger, and the rest is history. And I'm asking. Before we get to Peter, so your dad's logistics company, were you guys working with like three third party logistics handlers, or do you guys have your own trucks, your own drivers, or was a little bit of both? It was a little bit of both. So we rented our trucks. We had 26ft trucks that we leased, but then we also owned two to a one 12ft and one 16ft. We had a 17,000 square foot warehouse that we actually had another very large international company leasing the space from us. But eventually I started bringing clients and that not only needed that, you know, small business to business type movement, but also wanted to actually store their products. And so I've seen some very interesting pallets brought into my warehouse from interesting French pottery that I had never seen before. And so you're trying to be very careful with the handling. But I also learned a lot about OSHA and hazmat at that time because there was a client, that I was really trying to bring in that only at the time at East Coast, warehouses that they were working with nothing on the West Coast, but they were trying to expand their service range to get more into Home Depot and Lowe's and all of those types of hardware services. And so they were looking at my warehouse, and they brought me a 53ft entire loaded truck of this OSHA, hazmat product. And I learned a lot about that. And unfortunately, the deal ended up falling through, even though they had already shipped me a truck. That's a totally different story that I would love to talk. To them at once. But I got to learn a lot from kind of all those different aspects for not only learning about the truck and you know, what type of fuel to put in it. And you know, what is death? You can have people to this day be like, you know what death is? Yeah. Diesel exhaust. Yeah, I know exactly what that is. I know exactly how much frugality costs. But you learn so much about trucks and how to run a warehouse and how to manage clients and all of that. And so, yeah, by the time that we left, I had seven, 26ft box trucks that were running 18 hours every day. And then we had a 12 and a 16ft truck, that we would use anywhere from 4 to 6 days a week, plus all the courier stuff that we sold out all the way from Tahoe to when to mocha, all the way down to, Gardnerville. That's awesome. And you guys actually went through an exit that was happy. I got to end on a high note liquidity event. And we did. Work with his daughter. Yes, it was very interesting. And it's funny because I think back on it now of the, you know, people always tell you don't work with your family, don't work with your friends. And I forgot, don't know that I was like, I'm never working for my family. I'm never working with my friends again. I'm like, it's just hard and it's a different layer. But now I do my business partner. She's my best friend. And so it's it's different and it's working out really well. And and we both love it. And so I think also being young and kind of being thrown into a position that I knew nothing about and like being thrown into this company that I only have ever kind of had an arm's length from. It gave me a lot of opportunity to decide, like, am I going to sink or am I going to swim here? And I decided to. Swim, and I think it gives you some appreciation that you wouldn't have had for your father or for your family. Kind of get a get a peek behind the curtains. Go, man. Is there's a lot going on here. Didn't realize dad had to deal with all of this. That's really cool. I probably wear my gray hair. Started, frankly. So the hairstyle is just for you? I'll never know. Christy just ate hers down a couple days ago. Now back to Peter Kruger. So how did you actually meet Peter Kruger, and how did you guys end up kind of working together before you ended up taking over for him as executive? Peter doesn't remember this, but we actually met for the first time in 2015, and it was during the state commerce tax fight. So the snowball. That was a Sandoval. Yes. Roberson. The debacle. Yeah. Where the Republicans ended up sweeping all the state Senate and the state Assembly for the first time in forever. And no one saw it coming. No, not even the Republicans and the state and the voters had just beat the margins tax, which was on the ballot the previous November. So I'm a member of 2014 and then 2015 session stars, and we have this commerce tax bill get introduced, did the exact same thing at the margins tax was going to do. They just change the name. And it was it was really interesting. I mean, you have the entire business community all across the state. Every small business, all of that. And a lot of those small businesses stopped. The fight was over because they had defeated the merchants tax, all of the business groups. And yet we got to the end of April, and I'll never forget the bill hearing being scheduled on Memorial Day, which, you know, most people think, oh, it's Memorial Day. There's nothing happening at the session. Oh, no, we work 120 days on the weekends every holiday. So that's when they decided to do the hearing. And, Peter, because he was a sales act for petroleum and he had, some other associations, very pro business client was actively involved in those conversations. And it was 2015. And we're, you know, all of us, the staff were sitting there not allowed to be engaged. And, you know, the political side of things. You've got a job to do. But, I remember, you know, calling my dad on my break and saying, you know, they're doing the commerce tax, at this time today. And he was at some political breakfast and I remember him jumping in the car, rushing down to get to Carson City. And of course, the hearing room was packed. And my dad, to this day, still tells me that he got there a little bit late. But they had started out, but the room was completely packed. They had multiple overflow rooms and it was Peter was was sitting in the very front row and he saw my dad coming. They had met a few times previously, but nothing, you know, super in-depth yet. But Peter had gotten up and gave my dad his seat because at the time my dad was, one of the presidents for NFIB in the state. And so he gave him his seat. And, you know, my dad told me that story later on, and I remember going and talking with Peter, you know, in the hallways. And I still tell him that story. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember I'm like. Yeah, I don't know if he do. Because he's still like, what year did we meet? And I go, 2015. He goes, okay. The commerce tax for those that aren't familiar with it, tax in Nevada. Essentially you're exempt under 4 million of annual revenue. So if you're a big convenience store conglomerate, I you could theoretically incorporate each business by itself. And if you're under four man, avoid it. That's a hell of an administrative burden to carry just to avoid, in my opinion, an unnecessary tax. Yes. And until just a couple of years ago, even if you didn't hit that $4 million threshold, you were still required to file. To prove. To prove. Yeah, you didn't have that for any dollar. And unlike other taxes that are pretty straightforward, like excise taxes or sales taxes, where you can essentially it's charge to you, you can accrue it, you can pass it on. It's either a wash or it isn't charged to you. You accrue it and then you pay the taxable entity commerce tax is so confusing, the way they went about it, that it's actually really difficult to invoice customers based on a commerce tax. If it's a government entity, they refuse to pay it. Some customers of the big enough, they refuse to pay it. So you kind of have to bake it into your cost of goods sold, which is not how a tax should be really handled. It was very confusing. The business community, I think, is still mad at Sandoval over this. It was a bad idea, in my opinion. My personal opinion. And there's still Republicans who voted for that tax. Ten years ago, who are still going to different lunches and dinners and events and still having to hear from constituents about how dare they vote and have, you know, voted on that. And I think that that is important. But I also think it's important to remember that there were a lot of deals cut behind the scenes, and I know quite a few of them as to what happened, why, where that money actually was going. There's some interesting parallels here. If you go and look back at how much money Tesla was actually getting from a tax incentive perspective, and I don't want to oust anybody here. But if you go look at some of those numbers, you can clearly see how and why they came up with those specific figures. And we all, for the last ten years, have been somewhat trying to backtrack on some of that. Modified business tax is a big one that they tried to kind of roll back. There's the not having to report anymore. If you make under that $4 million threshold, there's the trying to raise up the threshold. Essentially to $5 million. All those little things. And we're all eating it up. And you're right, there's no way to pass that along. But it's also very hard to then explain to brand new legislators who've never been in the building before, weren't there for those conversations. You know, why there are issues with it. And then trying to convince them why we should continue to try to roll some of it back or even introduce, you know, something else that would help to roll it back, make it less hurtful to business owners, because it is a lot of paperwork. As I say. Yeah, it just felt like a sneaky tax. I mean, it very much was a sneaky tax, but it's not a sales tax. It's a it's this weird gray area. And then yeah, it's complicated. Depending on the size of your business or how you structure your business, if you want to avoid it and very complicated to accrue and pass it on like you would any other tax. So I'm not a fan now. So when you decide to run for office, that will be our first bill. Now I'll be a pastor before I be a politician, but I'm I'm a big fan of holding our elected representatives accountable. And I love the fact that people remember you should, you know, say, hey, you push this. This is really bad for the business community, and I'm going to remind you about it. That's accountability. Accountability is good for people. They learn that. Way. It was interesting even going into the 2019 legislative session. So four years later, 2018, we're having conversation and stirring campaigns where us as the business community, and I was fortunate enough at the time to represent the Reno Sparks Chamber of Commerce, who still one of my favorite clients ever, but sitting there amongst all the business owners and the chambers and the trade associations and everyone going, we are not going to support X, Y and Z because of their support for the commerce tax and because of how anti-business they have acted during the past two legislative sessions. And as is the business community, bear a lot of weight. I actually was given an interesting statistic this morning that the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and all of their members in Nevada, from an employee standpoint, they actually represent one third of the total population of Nevada. We want you to think about that. That makes sense. I would believe that. That's crazy. Right. But then you go, okay, well, all the more reason why it's so important for us is the business community are represented and are always on the same page because we truly can make a difference. We can change things. As long as you're informed and you give or you care enough to actually be informed on the policies and whether or not these individuals support those policies. I am not a big fan of the party system. I think that Democrat traditionally, and what a Democrat is today is very different. Same thing on the Republicans. So I think it's a good idea to be informed on the policies and hold the individuals accountable. They are supposed to be elected representatives so that they're not going along. What's your position on a policy? You should be vocal about it and hold them accountable. There are people on I want to say, all three sides of the aisle, because we've got some interesting IEP people and non persons, but getting along with a majority of them because they're pretty, pretty moderate. I want to say for the most part they can see both sides to an issue. But there's also people on both sides of the aisle that you know you just can't work with. And that's unfortunate. They're so far over on one side but also don't understand the policy, don't understand the true process. And when I mean process I mean like the actual inner workings of a business, the operations, signing the front of a paycheck, those types of processes. Yeah. And they're not willing to learn. And that's the hard part. No. They just add more regulatory tape and it gets more complicated and burdensome. Yeah. That's why we spend most of our time I feel like trying to defeat bad bills as opposed to pushing legislation through, there's enough laws and regulations out there. Let's try to get rid of some bad ones. Back to Peter Kruger. So shortly after that, you actually ended up, working with Peter at the at the time, Nevada Petroleum Markers and Convenience Store Association. Now it's known as the Energy and Convenience Association of Nevada. And that was during, Christy, my wife's, year as president. So how did you go from that to working with the Nevada mining Association and then end up kind of coming back as a state executive? Well, how did you navigate that path? It's a pretty funny path. And I, I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. So I got to work with Peter and his firm back in 2018. All the way through 2020. And I loved all of. I just loved meeting all the people that were part of a so still do. Yeah. Still do. I want to say. Yeah. And it was so fun for me to learn and get to take things, not just during session where you're mainly working on state projects and issues, but then even after session, you really are the person in the state of Nevada for everything city, county, state, and even federal. And I remember even then there was a lot of issues in regards to, convenience stores, whether it be an alcohol or tobacco issue. There was a huge signage issue that I worked on from a digital signage perspective, and having some, nonprofit groups be very anti any type of digital sign in downtown Reno. And so that was I learned more about lumens and about three months and I ever. Really wanted to. Yeah. And so then it you know it was really fun to get to translate a lot of that into everyone's everyday business and say, what makes sense for you? Why do you do X the way that you currently do? And then even bring that back to elected officials, the stakeholders, you know, city engineers, those types of people who are the ones actually pushing those types of policies, writing the technical language for it, and really getting to advocate for small business that that really is my lifeblood. And passion, getting to support small business owners and helping them to grow if that's what they so desire. But always fighting for the right to exist and working. I think like for the downstream, distribution industry, you have the convenience store type, you know, which is very it's unique because you've got car washes, you've got alcohol, you've got tobacco, you've got merchandizing, then of course you've got the fuel component. But you take that to like more of the wholesale side. You've got terminals, you got pipelines, you got rail. So it's it's a pretty wide breadth of topics that you have to find consensus on, you know, because what might work for, let's say, just an independent convenience store operator may not work for a larger company who's integrated at the wholesale side. And then if you even take us as a group and compare that to maybe like a larger midstream or refining, oftentimes where we're at a disconnect. So trying to find that local, state and federal consensus is can be difficult. Yeah. But honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way because again, that's how you make good. You try to make really good policy. And it's probably a controversial statement. But I even I've told the business community during sessions when both sides and I look at both sides as being the business owners and the business community kind of versus sometimes the unions, but some of the very kind of left wing conservation analyst type people, when both sides of the aisle are unhappy, that's the best policy. And obviously I'm always here to advocate for my businesses. But at the end of the day, when we've worked so hard and pushed so hard and so has that other side, and we both walk away kind of in a drawer. That's the best foreign policy that I see, because you get really nitty gritty into the weeds, but also knowing that it can be changed. I know from the state associations standpoint, we're really excited about it because we can still work with you. And also you could understand the oil position as it relates to mining association. Could you just briefly discuss what was it like working at the Mining Association? I know we went on a tour. We actually got to go to a refinery. That was pretty cool. But where were some of the, I guess, more fun topics that you got to cover, things that you got to do when you're with me? One thing I want to kind of back up on for a moment, too, is the whole reason that I ever even got the job of the Nevada mining Association is because of the people I had met during the 2015 state of session. I was with Peter and his firm, and then Covid hit and I just had this like this fire inside of me that was telling me I needed to go work in a hospital for a while. I just needed to, again, very part mom that. Grew up. With this. And so I took all of the PTO that I had had from the firm because I never took PTO. I would go work Monday through Thursday with with Peter's firm, and I would go work at the hospital Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And I did that for three months. And then I finally had to sit down with Peter and just say, I, I got like, I gotta go. I just, I feel like I need to go do this, even if it's temporary. And so he, he, you know, of course, completely understood where I was, but also some friends and we have remained friends since then and I just I love our relationship and I call him Pop-Pop is like my grandpa, who I just love to death. And so I went and worked at a hospital for eight months during Covid. And everybody says, why you went into medicine at an interesting time. And oh boy, was it an interesting time because of my experience and frankly, my, my degrees, which like, that's not everything in life, but because of the internships I have purposely thrown myself into and the policy projects, I mainly was on the floor of people that, had suicide ideation or I just got out of surgery. I was kind of like a babysitter for for patients, but I also worked hand in hand with the nurses and also the CNAs. So I would be in a room with patients and helping them do anything and everything, turning them, moving them, making sure they're eating. So I really got to see the entire process. And there was a point in time where this hospital on a Friday fired all of their managers just out of the blue, fired all their managers, then told all of the directors, which they have over 20 departments at this hospital, and they had like seven directors. So all of them were overseeing more than one department except for one person. And so the very next week, the directors were told that they were going to have to absorb every single policy that the managers were previously writing, reviewing and doing, and all of the directors had no idea what they were doing. They didn't know how to write a policy, they didn't know what was going on. And so I would be sitting on the floor on my days, and I would have directors come and help me down and find me. And say, so-and-so told me that you know how to write policy and you know this Amazon. So I would help them write their policy while I was on the floor. And I actually got to help them revise their emergency room policy for the first time in 20 years. And I got to help them rewrite that and do all that during Covid while we're swapping departments. So we've got Covid wings and everything going on. It was a crazy time. Well, in the midst of all of this. So for over eight months, one of my very good friends became the president of the Nevada mining Association and became president in January of 2020. So also an interesting time and he and I had met in the 2015 legislative session, he's an attorney and was also lobbying full time. And we met when I was staff and had just always stayed in touch. And he really had been, you know, really trying to convince me to come work with him, come work with the mining association and, you know, he just felt that there was so much good that that we could, we could do together and on the same team. And so, you know, it took a good eight months, probably a little bit more because he was trying to get me to come join even when I was, with Peter. But finally in, in April, let's see, 2021, I left the hospital and accepted a full time position at the Nevada mining Association to be their membership services manager. And just based on, I mean, the job alone and the job title, all I did, for the most part, was talk to members. And that was one thing I loved, because, again, it was getting to support those small businesses most a lot of them small, but then also learning about mining, which you know, is, you know, you grew up in Nevada and you had your fourth grade class, you know, a little bit about mining, but you don't really know about mining, especially living in now or living in Vegas. And so getting to go on tours, taking legislators on tours, getting to help members grow their current portfolios, get them introduced to mines. And also, one thing that was really fun for me was every single week, for the entirety of the almost two years that I was there, I had a different country calling me Canada, Mexico, South Africa, because Nevada actually has the best safety laws and the best bonding and reclamation laws in the entire country in regards to mining. And these countries wanted to know how we did it and what's the process, because obviously they are very different compared to the US. They want our best practices. They do. They want us all, which, I don't know, I kind of want to keep that as like a best kept secret across the U.S but that was really, really fun. And so from that, I ended up taking over as chief of staff and also doing business development for Nevada mining and, you know, getting to learn a lot, getting to do a lot, really building for the first time a supply chain group that was all of the supply chain directors for the big mines across the state. To also then talk from the logistical standpoint, knowing that, you know, Nevada, we're our own island. We don't have any water that's around us. We don't exactly have the best train system. So how do you continue to move raw materials in and out of the state? At the time, there was a lot of court issues also happening at Oakland, and they and I got to learn a lot about that when I had my logistics company, because I have the same issues. And so then getting to talk more with Nevada's go ahead and their directors of business and industry and trying to figure out, you know, this is an issue for everybody across Nevada, not just mining, not just logistics. But it was really fun getting to be there and meet all the people. And, I'm fortunate to so have many, many friends that still work at me as well as our members as yourself. But it's really like a family. Like just like you can't is. We're big proponent of NVMe for, if you do any business with mining in Nevada, you should be a member. If you're not, great people like Miranda that you can work with backtracking on what you kind of discussed with health care. I think it's true. For pretty much every business industry out there. There's a difference between working in the business and working on business. Sounds like you came in at a time when they were limiting their staff because of what was going on with the entire world at the time, and you had to take a hard look at working on the business as opposed to working in the business, because at some point it's kind of like the tail wagging the dog, and you're just keeping up with the day to day, and you never stop and say, hold on, time out. We haven't dusted off this emergency document in 20 years, and we're kind of in the middle of an emergency right now, so we might want to rethink this. Maybe this isn't appropriate, right? Just to use us as an example, our bylaws were sold at one point in time. We're looking at and we're like, so to call a board meeting, we actually have to call via telegram. I don't I don't think that's how we call board meetings anymore. So we might want to update this document. And when you're just dealing with whether it's small family business, big, small independent business, whatever it is, you do really need to stop every now and again and work on the business and not just carry on with the day to day. So that's probably cool that they get somebody new, younger, you know, tenacious that wants to help. So you're not a, you're not just helping with like, putting out the fires, the 911 in the day. We're all the same. Let's take a look at this from like, we're working on the business perspective so that moving forward, you're not carrying this 20 year old document into the next decade. As it was, and say, it's a good thing that Nevada still has the original Pony Express, stopped because otherwise, I don't know how you guys were calling board meetings, but it totally is. And I absolutely love and adore the people at the Mining Association. And I just threw myself into every opportunity I possibly could from the time that they bought a building a few years ago. While I was there, like I was painting the ceilings, I was cleaning things, painting walls, like cutting molding. And there's a. Midtown. Is that what it is? It's right by Virginia way. Okay. And people still give me a hard time about this because I identified the building as being for sale. It's two blocks from my house. We would walk the two blocks, and so it's still fun for me to get to drive by there pretty regularly, obviously by my house. But to just see, like, actually see the work. Yeah. All the people for over 100 years and the association's been around now, I can you remember 115 I want to say, but seeing truly the hard work that every person across the state who's ever been involved in mining, who is a miner, who is an administration and a mine, who is, a vendor and provides fuel, provides, you know, even haircuts. We've got people that are barbers that are part of the mining association because they're a barber in Elko, where they're a barber in Ely. And those services are necessary. Most companies just busing the miners from where their parking lot is to where they actually work every day. It's like it's a big ecosystem that supports this mine. So it really is. And it was important that we represented all of those people. I mean, even their, you know, their annual convention, they have over 700 people that show up in Lake Tahoe every year. And it is just an amazing, amazing about. And so you're able to go, yeah, I highly recommend it. We've been to it. I would recommend it as well. It's awesome. And I think I mean, I'm obviously, biased. I'm big on the oil industry, but there's some really cool industries out there mining. So cool. If you haven't had a chance, like go to a mine site, take a tour. We lucky enough to actually see a refinery port, a gold mine. And a gold. Yeah, yeah. It was actually 70% silver though. Remember that? Yeah, 30% gold. And then they're refine it after they take it out of there. It was awesome. So if you if you don't know anything about mining first of all, if you don't grow it, you mine it. Every American born requires a lot of mined material. And Nevada does it really, really well, so well that other countries are calling to find out what our best practices are, particularly on reclamation. Yes, exactly. And it was interesting. I just in the last couple days visiting L.A., I got to take a trip up to the old Ward mine, which, if you have the opportunity to hike it or take a side by side, I highly recommend it. It's absolutely gorgeous. But I stumbled across the actual door to the old mine, which it's an abandoned mine, I hope and I'm and like, I'm sure I don't give out any, but I did open the door. I didn't go inside. Also, there's nothing the job there, so I might want to get on that about better. But I was able to open the door and actually take a video of the entirety of what I could see up, you know, from that perspective. And it's just so cool. Like, that was the entry point for them to get inside the mountain, getting to go see an active mine, you should definitely go do open, but you should also do underground. But it's also cool to see an abandoned mine and you're going to go like go with actual officials and you know, people who can keep you safe. But it is just so wild to think that there are just there minds everywhere. There's hundreds of mines across the state of Nevada. There are around a statistic. The other day, almost 80,000 mining claims that are still just capped across the state of Nevada, and maybe 90% of them maybe will just never be used. I've said this before on this podcast. We have. We're lucky. We're blessed that we grew up in America. We have raw materials here. We should be accessing those raw materials here, shouldn't be relying on that coming from other countries. My personal opinion, I also think that we do it smarter. We do it safer, we do it better. Other countries may disagree, but I'm happy to put the statistics up to support that. And Nevada is the epicenter of that. I mean, the West in general really like between Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Utah has got a lot of mining capabilities that they're not accessing. Carbon County, Utah used to be like the old out. It was how Elko is today is what Carbon County used to be, back when they were doing a lot more coal mining, similar to West Virginia, like that whole economic downturn. You can see it, you can see with the people, you can see with the town. It's really disheartening. And if they would just lean in like Kohl's, a great source of energy. We have some really great coal in Utah. So hopefully with this new administration, if they take a different turn and they also celebrate the safety and they celebrate the reclamation, because I feel like there's a massive like information vacuum that isn't being filled when you don't just chop out a mountain and leave it the way it is, like there's a lot that goes into mining. I think if people understood it, they would appreciate it more. I fully agree, and for anybody that's interested and what it actually takes to open a mine from the safety bonding requirement of reclamation in the state, we mining, and I'm sure they still have it somewhere, but on a huge, probably, six foot tall poster, probably, I would say minimum of 60ft long and like ten point font. The entire process for how you actually open up a mine and minimum, it's a ten year process minimum. And you have to have the funding and the backing to put up your bond to say if this mine fails or even when we decide to close it, you're going to clean it up, you're going to make it into a lake, or you're going to make it into some type of outdoor recreational activity. But she will make it safe. Yeah. Sparks. Marina. Greatest, example of reclamation. There's probably people that live on this first Marina that don't even realize that. They wouldn't have been swimming in it, but it is beautiful to walk. Around. It looks nice. Great reclamation project. One of the last mines that Christy and I went to, actually, we were driving in and it kind of looked like, you know, star nursery or Moon Nursery. It's like actual plant nurseries. And there's six of them as we're driving, and we're asking the guy who's the head of the reclamation, like, so what's going on with all that? And he's like, well, that's like the indigenous plant life. We plant these nurseries, you know, so that as because they're kind of reclaiming as they continue with the mining, which I love that process. So they're putting the plant nurseries in there. And they had some wild like wildlife. They had some bighorn sheep. So they have helicopter guys coming out. They can't sheep with like net cannons. They'd airlift them, move them off site, and then if they got too close to the mining, they do it over and over again. And then you've also got like the ear cans for the birds. It's that way if you're stripping, you know, materials and there's chemicals out there that you don't want the bird live getting close to. We were out there and they're shooting these cannons off and we're freaking out like, what the hell was that? He's like, that's just to make sure that none of the birds get hurt. So they go, really? I think above and beyond to try to take care of the land and restore the land as close as they can is it's original state. But, our modern way of life requires a lot of raw materials. So it. Does. It does. And I mean, just, you know, one more added thing for mining association is they have a safety committee and they give out annual safety awards every year. And it is just so incredible that work that our minds are doing. And really their mantra is, is that they want you to get home the same way that you came to work. Yeah, they want you to get home. They're not they're not in it for any other reason. And safety is our number one priority. And from the environmental side, their environmental committee is absolutely incredible. The experts that are on that from BLM that understand sage grouse and golden eagles and, you know, any and all plant life and what it's going to take for you to open a mine. And, you know what the rules are. And you can't be a mile within a golden eagle's nest and different things like that that most people wouldn't even think of all goes into mining. Yeah. And hopefully they can keep all that. But just shorten the timeline so that they can actually access these, materials a lot quicker and not have like a let's just I couldn't think of, you know, hey, we can do this project. We have funding, we've got a plan in place strategically, our a ten year timeline before you can actually start doing that. That's too long. It's a long. Time. Yeah. I don't think you're going to win the arms race. With that sort of timeline. So after the mining association, you come back to the Petroleum Association. I think, you know, with a bunch of us that were really excited to have you back because we had worked with you in the past, we would continue working with you at the Mining Association. You know, Peter had talked about succession. He had a few ideas. I just don't think there was, an option that fit for his timeline or whatever he was looking for. So when you actually came on board, we were super excited. Peter was actually the first pod that we did. So how are things going now for for you business partners on the lobbying, marketing, media side? But also how do you think it's going for the state association? So I think it's going great. And I do want to back up for a moment here that I left the mining association in early 2023, and I left to go take a job to be the executive director of the Rock Foundation, which unfortunately is no longer existed, but running a multimillion dollar foundation, for the largest orthopedic center in northern Nevada. And I love, you know, I love health care. And it also gave me the opportunity to truly run a business. You know, I have a board of directors to answer to and and to guide, you know, very similar to every trade association. But, I did get to go do that for two years. And, you know, at the time was my absolute dream job if I wasn't going to go to work for myself. But that is also funny to mention that when I left The Firm with Peter back in 2020, I had one healthcare client who who I have brought in was really like, you know, my client was my baby and I love that client refused to allow me to leave the firm without me taking them with me. And so I actually started three C House back in 2020 and had one client. And at the time, you know, there wasn't a ton of stuff that was, having to be boots on the ground day to day. It was a lot of background work and meetings and paperwork kind of stuff, but to advocate efficiently for that. And so I had them for the longest time until, just last year when I took my three c, government affairs firm, which Charlie had worked for me previously, my business partner, as a contractor to be my boots on the ground. And then we took her marketing and media company that she's had almost ten years now and decided that we're stronger together and would be better together. Because we know so many times with business owners, there's so busy running the business, they don't have the time to do the marketing. They don't have the time to do social media. For those that don't have true sales department, that's the way that they potentially get new clients and new customers is through social media these days. And so we're not only able to take the clients that she had and bring them into our firm and continue to do all the things that we've been doing, which I'm very proud. Are all small businesses, really across the West Coast, but also then being able to offer additional services to our government affairs clients, which again, are all businesses, except for just a few few that are not from just an association perspective, but we were really able to kind of level up in that to start off her map. And so again, Peter and I have been friends now for over, I want to say over ten years. And we just always kind of talked about the potential for what it would look like for me to, you know, one day take over for him, if you will. And, you know, he's joked about it, I would say for the last four years that, you know, it's going to happen. And, you know, we would go to dinner and, you know, catch up and always checking in and seeing kind of where I was. And, just over a year ago now, I sat down with him and, and told him that I was really serious about wanting to, you know, move forward and kind of live out the succession plan that I think he had had dreamt up for so long. And so we started the process. And so based on that process, we had three see House officially take over his book of business October 1st of 2024. And I feel very fortunate to already know all of the clients that he had and I think have some pretty strong relationships with them. As you know, thankfully, everybody renewed their contract, and kept it with Rick as we could move forward and Peter is still on with Rick House. And, you know, it's funny, we joke that I used to work for him and now he gets to work for me. So it's just a fun dynamic, just a little bit swapped and it's also fun to go back to all of the projects and the ideas that Peter and I had had even back in 2018 and 19 and 20. And now really be able to sit down with this really robust team that we have and very experienced, very smart individuals who I'm very fortunate enough to have on my team. But to sit down and look at all those projects and go, we can do this now. We have the capacity to do it. We know what is, you know, right during current, you know, within these current events and where we want to take the association and where we want to take our members. You know, as long as hopefully they're along for the ride. But, you know, our very first thing right out of the gate was this big PR rebranding. Yeah. Said and you know, love Nevada Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association. But I frankly didn't want to say it when I went up to testify every single time. Mouthful it. It's a little bit of a mouthful, but. It's a long acronym. It it's a little at a long name. Yeah. The logo needed a little bit of tweaking to the flurry, but it was really fun to get the board involved in that process. And, you know, us getting to take that in house and coming up with great ideas and then presenting it to the board and allowing them to decide what they want, the future and what they want, the legacy of this trade association be. And we wanted to make sure we got it done before the start of this session, and I'm really glad that we did. We have had so much positive feedback on on the colors, on the new name, on the logo, because Nevada's on such an interesting current about space and energy, and we really are needing to kind of diversify our portfolio. And, you know, not saying that like we have to have land or we have to have solar, but diversification, even from the logistics side and looking into like, what is the next thing like what is the next Tesla? We're not quite sure yet. And how can convenience stores be continuing to expand and obviously staying in business? You know, as the old adage goes, if you're not changing, you're dying. And we want to make sure that our trade association continues to change and continues to grow. So just as a quick testimonial, because we talked about, you know, government affairs, lobbying effort, but you also kind of have this like marketing component to your agency. I think just using Eken as an example. All those services were needed. Not only is there the government affairs piece, that's obvious, you want to monitor bills, you want to make sure your you're doing your best to push bad legislation out or promote good legislation. But because it was a very old trade association, we didn't spend a lot of time on branding. We hadn't spent a lot of time on logos, typography, everything else that goes into that and then going out and getting that message out there on the PR side so the people understand what you do, what part of the business community that you represent and why you have these strong opinions about these bills. So I feel like as a client, we got to see all that come together and and what really, really. Well, obviously we gave our feedback and you guys just kind of came back with options. And right now I really like that. So thank you for doing that. I think it was long overdue. But like most things you just get busy with the day to day and some of that stuff gets pushed aside. So it's nice that you guys have that built in, internally, to offer not only to us but hopefully to other clients that they're receptive to it. Absolutely. And really, you know, my view of trade associations and any type of nonprofit is that you've kind of got these three main groups, and without the first two, you can't make change in the third. And the first is your actual members and the people that you're representing in the board. The second is the stakeholders. And when I look at our stakeholders, it's the Department of Agriculture. It is, you know, the governor's office. It is these people that you know, are out there as the city engineers making up things about how digital signs for gas stations can work. And so loud on, you know, and alcohol and tobacco and, and gas prices and all that. But the third piece there is the public and the public awareness. And you can't get public advocacy or even understanding or even trying to educate them without first having those two groups. I want to say kind of on your side. First one obviously has to be on your side, but the second they have to at least know who you are. Yeah. And because Peter has done such an incredible job over the last three decades, really becoming a true expert and being known as the true expert in all things fuel, all things can be enhanced. It's been you know, I don't want to say it's easy. Nothing's ever easy. But it has been so natural to walk into these rooms to meet with the head of the Department of Agriculture and talk about convenient store signs, and to have people that really are the ones who set all the different types of fuel revenue indexing are the ones making those changes across the state to simply be able to pick up the phone, send an email, and be able to have that very cordial conversation, as opposed to having to either start brand new and there being struggles and there's not. And so we're really excited to take this association to the next level, which is educating the public. And, you know, I'm sure, you know, people are always like, why are gas prices so high? Why is this happening? Why can't the convenience store lower them? And most of them don't understand that it's not the convenience store who's setting the price. They maybe are getting a couple pennies, pennies. Per. Gallon in revenue. And so it's things like that that we want to be more proactive in and getting a little bit more media attention. Doing a little bit more of, you know, Instagram, you know, please follow us on Instagram. I really proud of what we're putting out, but also from the media side and putting out, different educational opportunities and, you know, talking to the media about gas prices. And we don't just want to be the call when there's an emergency about why is gas prices rising and fires in LA and how is that going to impact Nevada. We want to talk about the good things, too, and the amazing things that our business owners all across the state are doing. And so that's kind of the next level that we see. Perfect Segway. And I'll probably pop in and nicotine. Here is your answer. This question. We're fresh out of Nevada's biannual state legislator meeting for months, where they have the opportunity to push their bills through the House and the Senate, get it, put it into law. In Nevada, we were monitoring 4 or 5 bills pretty closely, some that we were in support of, others that we were in opposition of. Can you give us a brief breakdown on probably the one bill that we were actually monitoring that made its way through and what happened at the end of the Nevada Legislature, that kind of put everything else on the backdrop. Well, I will say, I've never seen such a dramatic legislative session. And all my years, which I know all of my years, it's not the comparison to some others, but, we had, yeah, about 4 or 5 bills that we were really monitoring closely. One that was actually our bill, AB 29, which we worked hand in hand with the Department of Agriculture on to create a phrase conformity for all convenience stores across the state. Before there was a lot of confusion about colors, sizing, just kind of the whole way that it looked. And now we have this conformity where not only business owners understand it and know what is okay and what is not okay, but those that maybe don't follow it. It allows the Department of Agriculture to actually come in and say, hey, the sign is not correct because you always want to make sure I'm price pricing science. A it's accurate, but also be that it can be read. And so that was you know, thankfully not controversial. We got that bill through was signed by the governor. And that was one of our biggest, really biggest bills. And it was a big one for us this session. Can of put that in layman's terms real quick and please correct me if I'm wrong. So if you're a convenience store owner, right, and you've got a price sign out there, I would argue that we're probably the most transparently priced industry out there. You've got one on every corner. There's been a law regarding sizes, colors, whatever for signs over time, sign technology does evolve like any other form of technology. And as convenience store owners started to adopt some of this evolution, it puts them at odds with the regulators because the law really hasn't solved that technological advancement. And for a long time, the regulators kind of just give you a pass because they're like, well, yeah, they're not doing anything wrong. They're just using the new latest and greatest. And then at a certain point, enforcement enters the equation. You're like, wait a minute, now I'm getting ncvhs violations, penalties, fines, whatever it may be. I'm not doing anything wrong per se. I'm just using the latest and greatest. So everybody takes a pause. We work with people like yourself to go, we really got to update the law so that it matches modern, you know, sign technology so that our guys aren't getting penalized or fined for really not doing anything wrong, just trying to promote their business by putting good, transparent pricing out there. Fair. Exactly, exactly. And I do just want to reiterate something that you mentioned, because again, it is not like any other industry that we truly are fully transparent on public Street, on Main Street, anywhere, exactly what your price for gasoline is going to be. And, you know, it's always funny to me when I'm driving down the street and you've got three convenience stores all within about, you know, 100ft of each other, and one of them may have a different price than the other two, but you as the consumer, get to choose where you decide to go. And there is no other industry in the entire country that's like that. And so I just I just want to reiterate that. But yes, in layman's terms, that's exactly what it does. You know, it's really interesting. Again, when we start talking about like digital signing, and how in main streets like downtown Reno and similarly down in the Las Vegas area, the cities have tried to create ordinances about how bright your digital sign could be. And so there's things like that, even that we do a quite a bit because the city will call this convenience store owner a convenience store owner will call us. And that's, you know, when we get involved, most of the time, which, you know, again, we've got great relationships. We'll have somebody from the city give us a heads up before they even call the convenience store owner to say, hey, this is potentially coming down the pike. And that's when we get to immediately get involved. And then we get to reach out to our members and also get them involved. I mean, I think from their standpoint, they don't want a digital sign to be a distraction to the point of someone driving their car off the road. Totally get where they're coming from. You try to find a world where, like, both parties are happy. And I think, yeah, that's where you don't want to go into the conversation trying to win the debate every time. As much as like, let's have a common sense conversation. These guys are trying to put their, you know, product pricing up. We don't want that to be an inconvenience to the public. What's the perfect world right in the middle that we can get this thing updated so we're not working off? You know, regulations are laws from four years ago. Exactly. And, you know, one thing that was really interesting a few years ago that I got to work on was there was a new gas station that wanted to open up and right in downtown Reno, like you've been arena, a midtown area and cool area. It is a great area. And at the moment there is an ordinance, that would not allow a digital sign. Now there's one gas station that is directly next to the main South Virginia street in downtown. And what we're talking about safety is this convenience store wanted to change their manual sign where someone goes up on a ladder annually, changes the numbers they wanted to change to a digital sign. And the city was saying no because they believed it was going to be too bright for the residents down there. And our, you know, argument was at its safety. There have been a few times where the person on that ladder almost fell off the ladder, and if they had done so, they would have come right into oncoming traffic. Like that's how close the sign was and ears to the street. But yet we couldn't get the digital sign because the anti digital sign group, which I still can't believe that there's an anti digital sign group at the Anti Digital Signage Group was saying no, the residents, it's just not it's not natural. That shouldn't happen. And so that's when we start having industry and businesses conflicting with, you know some of these other conservation type groups. But really we were looking at it from a safety perspective. We have a debacle going on right now regarding a sign. And, Nye County had torn apart Nye County. It's not from like a regulator standpoint at all. It's, we have an old sign, old school, where you put the numbers up every day. Not that hard during the summer, particularly harder during the winter. And Tonopah, the land apparently was sold. We're trying to get hold of the new landowner. Like, we want to give you money so that we can now put a digital sign up and we can't get Ahold of anybody who owns this land. So I don't know who it is. We still have a tangible sign up there that we're not using, and we want to put a new one up there. So does anybody in Tonopah can help us out with this sign? We really appreciate it. But again, not from a regulator standpoint. Just a small market. Really tough to get in touch with anybody out there. All right. So moving on past the sign, a few other bills that we're watching. How come those didn't make it out? You know, one thing that's always funny is session trying to explain, especially to clients, but even just kind of the general public who's not in the legislative building every day, the true dynamics of the legislature, because they don't really, you know, really, truly get it unless you're there constantly. And there is a lot of in party fighting. So, you know, just in case, surprise out. Now, the Senate and the Assembly are both currently controlled majority by Democrats. We as the association we're working on some we believe very important bills, one of which was being sponsored by the Senate majority leader, which was the vape directory bill, and we had the votes for it. It passed out of the Senate. We worked very hard on the fiscal note, knowing that from the enforcement piece, that was what was going to cost the most amount of money, we had all of the manufacturers on board for it, knowing that they were the ones who, had looked it over, had review the language, were agreeing to it, as well as knowing they were going to be the ones to fund the project. We had it all straightened out. The bill got over to the assembly side, and now this bill, because it's both policy and House fiscal notes and hits in a monetary way, somehow was going to have to go to at least two committees in each House. And so it went to one committee in the Senate. And then it went to the money committee, and it had to do the same thing on the Assembly side. And unfortunately, we got all the way to the Assembly side. We have the hearing in the money committee two days before the end of session. And on the final day, which we we don't see any Di until 1159 to 9 p.m. the Assembly Ways and Means chair opted to to not push it forward and not hold it for a vote. Unfortunately, because of the inter-party fighting between her party and the Senate and so we had some pretty unfortunate I would call them losses, but also they're kind of a draw on many, many platforms between the legislation that just didn't get passed through through the legislature because of that in party fighting, but then also the governor, Governor Lombardo, having a historical number of vetoes, I believe he vetoed 92 bills, and that is the most amount any one sitting governor had ever done, let alone one sitting governor in one session. And that's how many bills he vetoed. Just the session. Last session he vetoed over 70. And so, you know, a lot of us from business community, from union perspective, we're all kind of looking at this as a loss. And, you know, again, it's interesting trying to explain some of those dynamics to the public. And then, you know, even talking about the last day of session, it's, you know, an hour before we're supposed to be done. And the Senate still has over 100 bills that they need to vote on. And they just keep taking recess after recess. We get 20 minutes to the end of the deadline.

So it's 11: 1:10:08

40 p.m. they take a recess and three minutes later they, you know, they gavel back in. So the screen comes back on. For those that are not currently sitting in the in the chamber so they can watch it. And it's the Senate pro time that has the lieutenant governor's gavel in her hand gambling back in. Not the lieutenant governor. Not the lieutenant governor. And then he's the president of the Senate, who's the president of the Senate, who is in charge of all the proceedings. And again, we're 20 minutes before the end of session. This is unheard. With over 100 bills to review. Over 100 bills to still try to pass. And a tweet goes out from the lieutenant governor himself saying that he had been locked out of the chamber. I read it, I remember reaching out here. I was like, what could a shenanigans are going on up in Carson City right now. Locked out. And so, we had a Republican senator who wonderful parliamentarian, amazing historians stand up and say, where's the lieutenant governor? And it just started this, you know, kind of Fury Ball, from the Democrat side saying, well, we need to get going. So I stood up here and, you know, let's let's do it when, if you go back and watch that tape, which I have done, you can clearly see outside of the doors, because there's a glass window and then a glass window next to the doors. People are running around like their hair is on fire outside. I have never seen so much chaos in 20 minutes like that. And so finally the lieutenant governor comes back and they recess the gavel back him of him. Then the majority party introduces a Senate concurrent resolution to remove Republican votes from what would have been a stand up, a vote. So in the Senate, there are 21 senators who Republicans have one Senate seat more than the Democrats. Having a supermajority. And a supermajority would allow the Democrats or whoever's in charge, to pass any bill they want, regardless of veto, regardless of the fee. And it would be very hard to keep it as a veto because they could come back and reverse it. And so Republicans having that one extra seat is vitally important to the legislative process. And the Democrats say that they want to remove a Republican from what would be a stand up vote. Again, over 100 bills left to go the way they're currently voting is by a push of a button. Every single senator has to do it, and that takes minutes every single time. So instead, they essentially want to be able to stand up and just pass it through. And it's funny because when they stood up to say what the bill does, which is required, they said like changes the makeup of the legislative commission, not removes Republic and votes from the legislative commission. And so Senator Hansen once again stands up and start saying, why are we not being given the opportunity to even discuss this bill? What are you doing? And it was so wild watching them go back and forth, trying to get the bill moved to, to be voted on. All of these things. And we don't have filibusters officially in the state of Nevada. But Senator Hanson did stand up for 15 minutes and just spoke on why this bill is wrong, why this is wrong to the democratic process not being allowed to even know about the bill prior to them even introducing it. They weren't being allowed to have discussion on it. And so, you know, obviously there's always a, you know, kind of that political means to why they do things, which I fully respect. But we finally get about a minute and a half, maybe two minutes before we are supposed to be dead.

So it is 11: 1:13:42

57 p.m. and they finally call for the vote. Again, this vote has to be by push of a button because they did that. This was the bill to pass. Being able to just stand up and do voting. Every single senator in that chamber push their button except for one sole Republican senator, and she waited until like 12 0015. So we are now past the constitutional deadline of when we need to be done. And so that everybody stopped. We've got the Assembly members waiting outside the door who have already signed, who died a few minutes earlier and waiting for the Senate to be done so that they can inform each other, which again, just part of the constitutional process. But they pass this bill, it passes because it didn't require a supermajority. And then Senator Hanson and a few of the others, other Republicans go, we need a legal opinion on this. Where is the parliamentarian? Because now, not only have we gone past the Constitu tional deadline of when the session is supposed to be over, yeah, we've now officially taken a vote past the constitutional deadline, and so I'm going to be really curious to see what happens. I definitely think this opens up the Democrats sign up for lawsuits. Probably not even just one, possibly two. Yeah, they ended up not officially signing dying until like 1225 because it took that long for legal and the parliamentarian to get together and talk and, you know, go through things and then rush over to have the conversation with both the majority and the minority leaders. And really try to get everybody on the same page about where they were at. And then signing day, which it takes a minimum if anybody's ever walked from the state legislature to the state capitol building, which is where the governor's office says it is required that members from both houses, the Senate and the Assembly, have to physically walk across the Capitol grounds to the Capitol to physically inform the governor that session is over. But I mean, that takes a minimum of seven minutes to do. And so when you think about how at 1158, they still weren't even in those proceedings, there was no way that constitutionally we were going to be done by midnight. And so that's where that's at. Hundreds of bills died on both sides because the Constitution and all issues, the in party fighting, no one really knowing what's going on. And then we have 92 vetoes that come down the pike. Unfortunately, the session was pretty much pretty much a wash, and I am proud that there's a lot of anti-business, in my view, bad policy that either didn't. Go through. Or got vetoed. But unfortunately, you know, if Governor Lombardo does not, when all of those bills that got vetoed are going to come back in 2027. And so I'm a huge advocate that having fairness and, you know, coal houses, I never believe it's good to have just one party solely in control. And I think we can use really any session in the last ten years, whether it be 2015 with the Commerce tax all the way up to now, there should always be fairness and hopefully always a little bit of balance. I agree very much. So do you think they're going to go to a special session? So while we did have the economic impact survey in April, come out and say that Nevada was going to be in a pretty substantial deficit. I'm not saying is actually going to be in a deficit. Not only did we move money out of the state general fund, we also moved money out of the state rainy day fund, for a total of about $650 million. And at this moment, while, yes, Nevada relies a lot on the federal government for Medicaid, Medicare, etc., we are not going to know about that until August at the very earliest, when the federal government is done with their budget. And only then will we decide whether or not we need to go into a special session. So if the budget from the feds looks, I'd say bad for Nevada. High likelihood that we go into a special in October. So all eyes on the big, beautiful bill. All eyes on the big, beautiful Bill. I love I love the big little beautiful Bill. Minus one provision in it, which you can actually put out a social media kind of alert on it the other day. But there is a tobacco agriculture piece in that bill which would remove the duty drawback program, which, frankly, would be devastating to our farmers of of tobacco across the country. And so if we could get that one provision removed, I think the bill should just pass. Sounds good. Okay. So perfect segue then. I think we can end on this. Current events. It was a wild weekend. What's today? June 23rd. June 23rd. Trump has said that he wants a big, beautiful bill out of the Senate, hopefully approved by both sides before July 4th. We'll see. I think, the events over the weekend, may disrupt some of the party lines. Obviously, you have some on the Democrats that were supportive, that finally there was a a hard line that was drawn with Iran, which is that we will not allow a nuclear program or nuclear capability. So I think a nuclear program is more of an ideology. I don't know how you kill an ideology, but you certainly can kill capabilities. And I think they did a pretty good job of doing that over the weekend with, a wild military action. I think that'll probably go down in the history books, in my opinion, or for our industry. Sky high oil prices isn't good. I mean, it might be good if you're in the production game or in the refining game, but what we see is construction companies, mining companies, convenience stores, you know, they typically have credit limits. You know, you work on credit, you deliver fuel, they pay you ten days later could be a net 15 or a net 30. But if all of a sudden the amount of fuel that they go through their bill doubles, customers are typically slower to pay their bills, you know, and that can put you in a hard position of, hey, I can no longer deliver to you until you pay us for the last load. That can disrupt a business relationship. It's also a lot more expensive. I mean, typically that's one of your highest operating expenses. Could be your third, fourth or fifth highest operating expense. Now, all of a sudden, your 20,000 gallons of diesel fuel a month is twice as expensive. So we don't want to see crude oil going above $100 a barrel. It hurts our business. It hurts our customers businesses. But I also think it hurts Trump's it his agenda for the administration. So what do you see coming out? All the GOP politics. Do you think that we're going to get to world peace? Or do you think that we're going to get to World War three? If you had to weigh both sides of that argument? Well, I was running for Miss America, obviously. I have to say I want royalties, which obviously I always hoped for, but unfortunately that's just not realistic. Any type of war, any type of conflict that's going to be happening, especially in countries that control oil, that we get oil from, that we import and export with is absolutely going to impact oil prices. And and again, you know, so important that people hopefully kind of understand what it is that a barrel of oil costs and then how it's going to impact the gallon of gas that they're going to go buy at their local convenience store. All your groceries. Or groceries, which. Are home construction, costs basically everything. Exactly. And so many of our convenience stores across the state of Nevada, that truly is the grocery store for the local people that live there. And I think that's something a lot of people don't don't realize. They don't have Kroger's and Raley's that, you know, are in every single small town across this across our state. It's a lot of convenience stores. And so they rely on fresh produce and they rely on, gas to hopefully stay about the same price. And so between what's going on nationally and then you start talking about, you know, state side and what we're looking at from California, I mean, Nevada again, I mean, we're we're an island and we've got to figure out our own energy policy. But if we don't start figuring something out, gas prices are going to start skyrocketing. And yes, world events always, always, always are going to impact what we're doing. But I think we need to start taking a little bit more control of our own destiny and deciding who it is that we want to be when we grow up. I agree, and I think that was probably our primary narrative when we went to DC as much as we were talking about a lot of these bills that were in session at the time, I think the main focus was, hey, California has taken a very aggressive approach that they're very anti fossil fuel. They push some things through last year that and you know our governor forecast the the Democratic governor of Arizona forecast in the business environment. Also forecast that this is going to be really bad for big oil. And if you do this, you could force big oil companies out of California. The unfortunate part is 88% of our refined fuel comes from California, Arizona also to a large degree, not as much as us, but if two refineries, Phillips and Valero, go offline at the end of 25 and at the end of 26, that brings offline 22% of California's refining capacity. And demand doesn't change, which means you're bringing in tankers of refined product from the Asian market, or all the way from the Gulf Coast market. And if people are concerned about what's going on in the Middle East right now, I think you should be equally concerned about Taiwan, not only for like, the semiconductors and how that would impact our modern way of life. I think that if China takes Taiwan, that that would create a tremendous amount of leverage, for the Asian markets, the dollar, which would be destabilizing to the United States dollar. And if California refineries are going offline and you're you're relying on the Asian market to supply, it could even be worse than the USC Professor Meech has, targeted, which was mid $8 for California for a gallon of gas and anywhere between 6 and $7 in Nevada. So one of the things that we had proposed is that you now have a federal government that's working with the Department of Interior, EPA and energy trying to create a regulatory environment where you can build infrastructure quickly. I mean, America needs transmission lines, America needs mining. We also need to be able to process the materials that we might not just mine it here, ship it to China, get it produced and bring it back. So if you have a federal government that's open to clearing up all the red tape, and if Nevada and the surrounding states are looking for additional refining sources, you're not so heavily weighted and dependent on California. I hope that California wakes up one day. I think it's the most beautiful state in our union. Best weather. My family goes down there to vacation, so I'm a big fan of California as a state. I'm not a fan of California politics. I think it's horrible for the business environment. I can't imagine being a resident of San Francisco and LA, loving your city and seeing what it's turned into, so I hope they turn it around. But if they don't, Nevada's got a wise enough and say, hey there are other refining sources out there. Hollyfrontier built a pipeline from Utah to Nevada, took them four years, $300 million, and they built two terminals. So if you don't have a 2008 regulatory environment, you could theoretically get things done a lot quicker. So hopefully these conversations are happening outside of just you and I, you know, sounding our alarm bell. And you know, they take it seriously because 6 or $7 for a gallon of gas, I can guarantee you that's a bipartisan issue in the state of Nevada, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, people are going to be unhappy with you if you allow this to happen. So please, if you're an elected representative, start having conversations and try to decouple us from the refining capacity in California because that's going down. I don't know if I can say anything else to that. You touched them all. But one thing I will just reiterate is on the mining processing side, a lot of people don't realize how long it actually takes from the time that the auras process out of the ground. And so, you know, something like what you and I saw, which is in, you know, kind of gold and silver flakes and, and all of that to the time it's processed, which many times does have to be shipped out of the country because Nevada doesn't have any of its own processing facilities. It could take 6 to 18 months for that product to actually show back up in, in the United States and be ready to go wherever it's going for whatever purpose. And that's for anything that's for lithium, that obviously huge, huge international conversation right now. That's for diatomaceous earth that you use and cool filters and it's kitty litter and all of these other things, and that's gold and silver and copper as well. And so when you start talking about higher prices of gas and higher prices, that's logistics. You're talking about a higher price for everything across the board. Yeah. And you may or may not be able to actually mine at a, at a profit when those costs go up. Some of those mines go through a lot of fuel. I mean it's diesel fuel, lubricants. That's what keeps the machinery going so that they can actually mine. And we actually deal with, the only rare earth mining company here on the West Coast had a mountain pass in California. And yes, everything is mined in the United States, but it is processed overseas. And 18 month turnaround time when there is no geopolitical conflict going on. Around Taiwan. So that's definitely something that we should watch considering trying to invade Taiwan by 2027. Scary times. It is scary times. And I, I just think it's so important that people just really need to, like, understand where our products are coming from and that it's not as simple as saying that we need to have now renewables. Renewables can definitely be part of the solution. But oil, gas, propane, natural gas, it's not going away. And it truly is the most reliable source that we have. So trying to outlaw oil, trying to outlaw fuel, trying to outlaw combustible engines doesn't make any sense. Minimum for the next 100 years, maybe in, you know, six hours from now, someone will come up with something that will revolutionize the industry. But this truly is the best and cleanest source of energy that we have. And so whether it's, you know, understanding the way gas prices actually work or it's even understanding how much a mining company actually makes on an ounce of silver, because those are actually very similar parallels. Mining companies are not just making millions or even billions of dollars over and above their expenses. It's actually very little. And is dependent on the quantity price. Very dependent on the kind, just like oil and gases. And so when you look at those two items, again, there's they're very parallel. And I just think it's important for consumers to understand that, you know, we're not just like a one trick pony here. We really are here to stay, keep our people safe. Continuously be, innovative. And having great ideas and trying to do what's best not only for our customers, our consumers and our own teams and our own people, but for our state and frankly, for the country. In my opinion, I think you should appreciate the fact that we're here in America for many reasons. But one of the main reasons is the raw materials that we have here. I think every country has to take a hard look at what raw materials do we have and what internal capabilities do we have surrounding those raw materials. If we've learned anything post 2020, I think, is that globalization is dead just in time. Inventory and offshoring that might work if there's, you know, no net trade barriers or there's no wars going on. But the history of the world works differently than that. And there are trade barriers, and there are wars going on. And we have had supply chain disruptions. And luckily we're in America, where there's a lot of raw materials that we should be accessing safely and responsibly. And there's some areas of the economy where we have some significant gaps. And I think that we need to close those gaps as quickly as possible, considering world events. So that's just my $0.02 on it around. I will say this. Thank you very much for doing this. Had a pleasure doing it. My pleasure. Super super fun. I appreciate you having you on. I'll have you on again. Hopefully. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Jobbers American Energy. If today's episode gave you a new perspective or reminded you why this work matters, leave us a review on your preferred podcast platform. It really does help support the show. For more episodes and resources, visit Jobbers podcast.com. Until next time.