KVIG Informative

Steve Hill has held leadership roles across nearly every major economic development body in Nevada over the past 15 years. Today he chairs the board overseeing a $380 million stadium subsidy — the latest stop on a career spent almost entirely inside Nevada’s public and quasi-public institutions.

Steve Hill was appointed director of Nevada’s Governor’s Office of Economic Development in 2011 by then-Gov. Brian Sandoval, according to the Stadium Authority’s own published biography of Hill. He later joined the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority in 2018, eventually becoming its president and CEO.

Hill’s public appointments extend well beyond those two roles. He has served as chairman of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Board of Trustees, commissioner on the Nevada Commission on Economic Development, a member of the Nevada Savings and Government Efficiency Commission, the Clark County Growth Task Force, the Trauma System Development Task Force, the RTC Regional Fixed Guideway Citizens Advisory Committee, the Clean Water Coalition, and the Legislature’s Interim Advisory Committee on Air Quality, according to his official biography.

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Hill also chaired the Governor’s Construction Liability Insurance Task Force and served as chairman of Service 1st Bank of Nevada, placing him in leadership roles spanning state economic policy, tourism promotion, transportation planning, insurance regulation and banking across more than a decade.

Hill’s current position atop the Stadium Authority traces directly from his LVCVA role. Gov. Joe Lombardo reappointed Hill to the Stadium Authority board in 2023, continuing an appointment Hill had originally received from then-Gov. Sisolak.

Nevada’s various boards, commissions and quasi-public authorities each maintain their own appointment processes, with no central mechanism tracking how many separate public bodies a single individual simultaneously leads or sits on across the state.

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The pattern isn’t unique to Hill. Nevada’s economic development, tourism and infrastructure institutions draw repeatedly from the same small circle of appointees, a structure that provides continuity of expertise but also means the same individuals accumulate decision-making authority across multiple public bodies that sometimes interact directly with one another, as the Stadium Authority and LVCVA now do.

Fifteen years ago, Hill was a state economic development official. Today he chairs a public board overseeing nearly $400 million in taxpayer stadium funding while simultaneously running the agency that helped secure it. Nevada’s appointment system made that possible one governor’s signature at a time — and nothing in state law stops it from happening again.