It’s that time again when Reno politics starts to feel less like City Hall and more like a soap opera filmed in a haunted mansion. This week’s episode stars Mayor Hillary Schieve, her new venture Spooge (yes, that’s really the name), and a political friendship circle that’s starting to look like a Ouija board of broken alliances.

Mariluz Garcia just threw herself a fundraiser, and it was the who’s who of Northern Nevada’s usual suspects. The room was filled with people who like to look important—and for good reason. Many of them wrote checks as big as $5,000 to keep Garcia in office. Heroes, right?

It’s that time again—campaign season—when local Republicans start the age-old tradition of cannibalizing their own, and the Republican women’s clubs happily set the table.

This article’s entertainment came via a cheery little email announcing a brand-new rule: no more showing up to meetings and buying lunch at the door—reservations only. Translation? If you’re not on the guest list, you’re not on the guest list. One can’t help but wonder: does that rule apply to the press too, or just to anyone who might ask inconvenient questions?

Deals, deferrals, and the appearance of justice is what Devon Reese’s ethics files cause us to ponder, after reading the opinion penned in the Reno Gazette Journal by Reese’s attorney and a failed judicial candidate who both used to serve in different capacities with the Nevada Commission on Ethics.

Devon Reese is many things—an attorney, a longtime figure in Reno politics, and a vocal presence on the dais. Lately he’s also been at the center of a swirl of ethics complaints that have ended, repeatedly and awkwardly, with deferrals, dismissals and negotiated agreements instead of firm, public findings. That sequence is not just legal paperwork: it is a story about power, process and perception—and it deserves a hard, clear-eyed look.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month—a cause worth elevating. But is Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks elevating the cause, or elevating himself? Below is what Hick’s office posted a far cry from this year’s post featuring Hicks.

If you’re not following Shaun Mullin on social media—especially Nextdoor—you’re missing out on some of the sharpest satire Reno has seen since… well, since Reno thought the Lear Theater was a good idea. Mullin has made an art form out of skewering the Reno City Council, a collection of politicians so thin-skinned they’d probably break out in hives if someone drew them a stick figure cartoon.

The City of Sparks has quietly settled the case of firefighter Timothy Egan, accused of assaulting 84-year-old Maureen Hvegholm over the crime of feeding stray cats. The 2022 incident drew statewide outrage—but here we are in 2025, and Egan is still drawing a taxpayer-funded paycheck.

So let’s ask the only question that matters: why is this man still employed? What else is being swept under the rug to keep him in uniform? And why is Mayor Ed Lawson comfortable with a firefighter who left an elderly woman bruised and shaken still representing his city? Seniors in Sparks clearly aren’t a priority for Lawson—unless, of course, he needs their votes in his next election.

Sun Valley doesn’t just have a grocery problem—it has a leadership problem. While residents watched their only supermarket circle the drain, Commissioner Mariluz Garcia somehow missed the smell. Maybe she didn’t notice the bare shelves. Maybe she never set foot in her own neighborhood store. Or maybe she just didn’t care—until election season rolled around.

Picon readers called us out - District Attorney Chris Hicks was spotted at Joe Lombardo’s governor kickoff at Western Nevada Supply. Sure, it makes for a good photo op — but we’re left to wonder: was Hicks there on his own dime, or was this yet another taxpayer-funded field trip?

Hold on tight, Reno. City Councilman Devon Reese is suddenly in the business of apologies — and we’re supposed to buy it. He offered up a half-hearted “sorry” over the Lear Theatre flap, but let’s be real: this isn’t remorse, it’s rehearsal. Reese isn’t apologizing to fix his behavior — he’s auditioning for the role of Nice Guy Mayor 2026.

Traffic, Grown Kids, and the Ghosts of Elections Past …

So apparently Trista Gomez is unhappy with Picon. We’ll just go ahead and say it — we’re fine with that. Now, at a meeting last night, Gomez explained why she moved: too much traffic, wanted to be closer to her kids… except, small detail, her kids are grown. Maybe without traffic her grown children will drive more often to her new home in Distrcit 3.

I’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again—why does the Nevada Commission on Ethics even exist? Yesterday’s meeting was nothing more than a backroom deal factory, where everything is conveniently confidential. Translation: citizens are kept in the dark while politicians cut themselves sweetheart deals.

It’s back. The one-acre rezoning that even the Reno Planning Commission couldn’t muster support for is rolling along — because in Reno politics, a tie vote is just a technicality, not a stop sign.

The developer’s advocate, Brook Oswald, spun it as “unique” — because, apparently, one acre of dirt is the unicorn of urban planning. “A great opportunity to do something special,” he said. Translation: stack ‘em high, sell ‘em fast, and don’t worry where the cars go.

Well, it looks like the Nevada Commission on Ethics has folded again — or to put it less politely, chicken-shitted out.

Adam Mayberry wants you to know one thing: he’s not a career politician.
At least, that’s the story he’s sticking to as he gears up for another run — this time in one of Washoe County’s reddest corners.

The Lear Theater, one of Reno’s most historic cultural landmarks, should be a source of pride — a hub of opportunity for the city to honor its past while investing in its future. Instead, City Hall treats it like an unwanted hand-me-down: an albatross to be pawned off, not a treasure to be restored.

Now, yet again, someone has come forward with a “Letter of Interest” to develop the property — and the unsolicited offer sort of has the smell of an offer that was made for 4th and Record Street. Enthusiasm is not a plan, and the Lear is drowning in decades of exactly that: empty promises and well-intentioned neglect.

If leadership is about vision, strategy, and cohesion — then Washoe County Republicans are proving once again that they’ve got none of the above. Their so-called leader, Bruce Parks, seems more like a stagehand than a director: taking cues, following scripts, and letting others ghostwrite the footnotes, easier to point a finger after failure.

In A River Runs Through It, the line “I am haunted by waters” speaks to beauty, memory, and loss. Under Devon Reese’s mayoral campaign, the Truckee River has taken on a far less poetic role: haunted not by nostalgia, but by neglect.

Reese, who now poses as the river’s great protector, has presided over years in which the Truckee became the city’s restroom of last resort. Residents don’t need campaign slogans — they need to be able to walk by the river without dodging human waste. Yet here’s Reese, standing riverside for campaign photos, hoping the public forgets what really flows downstream.

Dozens of residents showed up, pleaded, and practically begged: please don’t let neighborhood accessory dwelling units (ADUs) become short-term rentals. The council, after all, said ADUs were supposed to be about affordable housing. Affordable, for whom? Certainly not for the folks footing the bill to build one.

But last Wednesday, in a dazzling display of selective hearing, the Reno City Council did a full 180 and voted to let ADUs morph into mini-Hyatts. So much for keeping neighborhoods livable — apparently lobbyists with Airbnb tote bags get better seating than residents with concerns.

We’ve been hearing chatter from sources who used to work at Our Place that Dana Searcy, once the captain of the Nevada Cares Campus, may have slipped out of Washoe County without so much as a goodbye wave. No announcement, no update — just silence.