In Reno, Coincidence Has a Reserved Seat

Picon gets a chuckle from Councilmember Devon Reese who just seems to not be able to leave well enough alone. When we saw this post we pondered who represnts Waste Management in court cases locally and we found the name Simons Hall Johnston as their legal firm - isn’t that the same firm that Reese’s law partner hired to represent him? Oh, and isn’t the City of Reno voting today to hire Simons Hall Johnston to represent them in labor negotiations? Are they planning on putting all this on the record to be totally transparant?

This whole situation is starting to feel like déjà vu — the kind that takes longtime Reno watchers straight back to the Mayor Schieve “trackergate” dust-up with McDonald Carano. You may remember the moment: a constituent politely suggested the mayor disclose her firm’s involvement while a developer item sat on the agenda who the firm represented that the mayor would be voting on said agenda item. A perfectly reasonable transparency request, followed by a very human flash of irritation from the mayor, that said more than any prepared statement ever could. Disclosure is rarely controversial in theory; it’s just inconvenient in practice.

Which brings us to the present, where we’ll admit a small amount of professional irritation — not at the players, but at the timing. We had every intention of attending Wednesday’s Reno City Council meeting and quietly observing whether certain relationships would be mentioned voluntarily. There was even a friendly wager that dignified silence would prevail. Unfortunately for our betting record, the press got there first, and now silence is no longer an option. Nothing ruins a good political prediction like early daylight.

Then there’s the firm that seems to have mastered the art of municipal omnipresence. Their name appears on city matters, county investigations, court contracts, and the occasional school board meeting sighting for good measure. All perfectly legal, all properly documented — just remarkably… frequent. In a town this size, coincidence has a lot of frequent-flier miles.

The judicial side adds another layer of local-politics texture. The Second Judicial District Court’s outside legal relationships have long been the subject of polite hallway conversations, even when official confirmations are harder to come by. Observers note the historical footnote that a prior chief judge once shared a marital chapter with a partner at the same firm — a detail that’s public record and years in the rearview mirror, yet still resurfaces whenever contracts come up for renewal. The assumption now is that the current chief will continue existing arrangements, which may be entirely routine. Still, Reno has always been a town where personal histories and professional calendars tend to overlap in ways that keep coffee shops busy.

Add in the firm’s role in various county investigations over the years — each concluding within the bounds of the questions asked — and you get a pattern that fuels commentary more than controversy. Some call it experience. Others call it institutional familiarity. Either way, the taxpayer inevitably recognizes the name on the invoice. The firm investigated then Assessor Mike Clark and found the county had treated him fairly with all that TRO nonsense, you know after it was admitted to that the back-tattoo-photo was in fact part of a federal lawsuit, but the law firm didn’t update their investigation and perhaps note an error. In 2024 this firm did a very limited investigation into Grant Denton - Karma Box Project - and the Safe Camp, again the firm allowed Denton to run with I’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing when in fact the firm did not investigate the whistleblowers allegations. But hey, why make things clear.

None of this suggests impropriety; it simply highlights the peculiar optics of a small civic ecosystem where the same handful of firms, officials, and former relationships orbit the same public agenda items year after year. Reno doesn’t run on smoke-filled back rooms — it runs on well-worn conference rooms, recurring calendar invites, and a community memory that is both short on details and long on impressions. Transparency, in the end, isn’t about catching wrongdoing; it’s about saving everyone the trouble of guessing.

Our Town Reno’s post last week. Would Councilmember Devon Reese have disclosed this information today on the dais without a media push - we’ll never know.