Koenig Talks Rural Nevada, Legislative Work, and What Comes Next

Assemblyman Greg Koenig told those attending the Churchill Community Coalition quarterly luncheon Sept. 16 that representing rural Nevada sometimes means reminding fellow lawmakers there is considerably more to the state than Las Vegas and Reno.

Koenig, who said he is one of two rural Nevada state assemblymen, is a Fallon optometrist and business owner. He represents Assembly District 38, which includes Churchill, Mineral, and Esmeralda counties, along with parts of Lyon and Nye counties. He previously served 12 years on the Churchill County School Board and as a county commissioner.

As a Republican serving in a Legislature controlled by Democrats, Koenig said getting legislation passed has required working across the aisle. “I always say there’s two different type of legislature. There’s loud voices and there’s effective legislators,” Koenig said. “I spend too much time away from my family and over in Carson City to waste my time being a loud voice and not an effective legislator.”

Koenig said all 10 bills he introduced during the 2025 legislative session received hearings and seven passed, which he said was no small feat with a myriad of competing interests and 1,109 bills introduced.

According to the assemblyman, rural health care has been a major focus. In 2023, Koenig sponsored legislation that created a rural emergency hospital designation, allowing smaller hospitals to operate with fewer beds, staff, and diagnostic services while remaining available to stabilize patients before transferring them for higher levels of care. “If this law had been in effect five or 10 years ago, the hospital in Tonopah wouldn’t have had to close down,” Koenig said.

Koenig returned to rural health care in 2025 with Assembly Bill 326, which allows qualifying critical access hospitals to seek designation as Level IV trauma centers. Such centers can evaluate and stabilize seriously injured patients before transferring them to a higher-level trauma center, an important consideration in communities far from advanced trauma care.

Koenig said what he thought would be a straightforward bill proved otherwise. “Well, I stepped into a hornet's nest,” he said, explaining that the bill became caught in disputes involving larger Las Vegas hospitals. At one point, Koenig said an Assembly committee chair would only hear the bill proposal if he turned it into a study, while the Senate committee chairman told him he would only hear it if he did not.

After negotiations with lawmakers from both parties, the bill passed. Koenig added that Banner Churchill Community Hospital in Fallon is currently in the process of applying for Level IV designation.

With the next legislative session approaching, Koenig said he has already submitted three proposals and has a “tickler list” of roughly 30 ideas he must narrow to seven.

One bill would update Nevada law governing military leave for public employees serving in the National Guard. Koenig said Nevada’s limit of 10 days has fallen behind the federal standard of 15 days. “Currently, it’s illegal for counties to grant more than 10 days,” he said. If passed, the option to grant the full 15 days would be there. “It's not smart ever to put specific numbers in law because whenever that number changes, you've got to go back and change the law,” he said.

Another proposal comes directly from Koenig’s experience in his profession. He wants Nevada’s definition of visual impairment to expand to include central vision loss. “You could have macular degeneration and not see a single thing straight in front of you, but have decent peripheral vision, and you're not considered visually impaired,” he said. People with central vision loss do not qualify for disability benefits, while peripherally impaired individuals do.

In addition to Koenig’s presentation, the luncheon also recognized September as Suicide Prevention Month, which included an update on Project STAY (Say Something, Take Action, Ask Questions, You Can Be the Difference), which provides suicide-prevention training for sports coaches and activity leaders. Emma White of Life Is Worth It said Churchill County School District became the first district in Nevada to add the training requirement for coaches, with about 50 attending its first training. Project STAY is expanding statewide, with another Fallon training scheduled Nov. 19 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the district office.