Clark County . The Issues . Small Business & Permitting
The county is the front door.
Almost every business that opens in the unincorporated valley walks through a county counter first. The county licenses it, and the county permits the building it operates in. So small business is not a state issue or a federal one. It is a duty of this seat, and the candidate for it has stood in the line.
Every figure below comes from the Clark County Department of Business License, the Building and Fire Prevention Department, the county budget, or the U.S. Small Business Administration. Here is how licensing and permitting actually work, what the red tape costs a working owner, and where Manny stands. All of it sourced.
Every owner stands in the county's line.
People think of small business as a state or federal subject. In the unincorporated valley, the first three doors a business walks through are all county doors.
If you open a business in unincorporated Clark County, the county is your regulator before anyone else is. The Department of Business License decides whether you can operate and under what rules.1 The Building and Fire Prevention Department decides whether the space you lease can legally open, through plan review, permits, and inspections.4 And the Comprehensive Planning function, with the Commission as the final word, decides what can be built where, through zoning and special-use permits.910 Three county doors, and the District E seat is one of seven votes over all three.
That is why this page exists. Small business is not a slogan you put on a yard sign. It is a permit counter, a plan-review clock, and a license category, and every one of them is run by the county you are voting for. A commissioner who has never carried a payroll or waited on a permit is guessing at how that machine feels from the other side. A commissioner who has done both is not.
One commissioner is one of seven votes. But these are county counters, and the seat governs them.
A single commissioner cannot rewrite the licensing code overnight or set the price of rent. What the seat does is real all the same: it governs the departments, sets the budget and the fee posture, votes on zoning and special-use permits, and can demand the county publish how long its own permits actually take. This page is nonpartisan civics. Manny Kess is a candidate for the seat, and his positions are flagged as proposals where they appear.
First, the county has to let you open.
Before a single customer walks in, a business in the unincorporated county needs a county license. Here is how that counter works.
The Department of Business License issues and regulates licenses for businesses operating in unincorporated Clark County, from a corner restaurant to a contractor to a salon.1 Licenses fall into two broad tracks. A general license is the basic case and usually does not require a police background investigation. A regulated license, governed by Titles 6 and 7 of the county code, does: owners with a 10 percent or greater interest go through a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department background investigation, and the category list runs to more than 400 types, including liquor, gaming, cannabis, short-term rentals, massage, and sidewalk vending.2
The county has put the counter online. Businesses can apply for, renew, and manage licenses through the county's online licensing portal rather than only in person.3 That is real progress worth saying out loud. But the process still has real steps for a regulated business: confirm you are in the unincorporated county, get your state business license, register with the Nevada Department of Taxation, file a fictitious-name certificate if needed, complete the application packet including personal history forms, and book an appointment to submit it.2 For a first-time owner with rent already running, every one of those steps is time and money.
Then the building has to pass.
A license lets you operate. A permit lets the space open. The building counter is where a lot of small-business time and money quietly disappears.
The Building and Fire Prevention Department handles building permits, plan review, and inspections for the unincorporated county.4 Tenant improvements, a new sign, a kitchen build-out, a patio: most of it needs a permit, and anything beyond the simplest work needs plan review before it is approved. The county has moved much of this online through a citizen-access permitting portal, and simple permits that need no plan review can be issued immediately through it.6 That matters, because the slow part is not the simple permit. It is the review.
Here is the part most candidates never learn: the county publishes its target review timelines. A commercial project valued at or above $250,000 has a 21-day initial-review target. A smaller commercial project is 14 days, and a streamlined commercial project under $100,000 with zoning approval is 7 days. A standard or custom single-family home is 21 days, a minor residential review is 14, and every correction round after the first targets 10 days.5 Those are the county's own stated goals. The honest question, and the one this campaign keeps coming back to, is whether the county hits them, because the county does not publish how long its permits actually take.
Manny has sat in the permit office himself. Not a campaign volunteer. The candidate.
Fifteen years of building businesses in this valley means fifteen years of permit counters, plan-review corrections, and inspection sign-offs. Manny has personally been in the line, early, fluorescent lights overhead, waiting on a decision that a payroll was riding on. That is the whole credential here. The people who fix a broken counter best are the ones who have actually had to stand at it.
A permit delay is a payroll you still owe.
Red tape is not an abstraction to a small business. It is rent on a space you cannot open and wages for a team that cannot work yet.
When a restaurant signs a lease, the clock starts the day the keys change hands, not the day the doors open. Every week in plan review is a week of rent on a dark dining room. Every correction round is another stretch of paying a build-out crew to wait. For a thin-margin small business, a permitting delay is not a line item, it is the difference between making the first quarter and not. Fifteen years of payrolls is exactly the experience that turns that from a talking point into a number you have actually had to cover.
None of this means safety inspections are the enemy. Plan review exists because buildings catch fire and kitchens flood, and a serious owner wants the work done right. The goal is not no rules. The goal is rules that move at the speed of a working business: a counter that answers, a clock that is honest, and a correction process that does not bounce an applicant back four times for things that could have been caught at once. That is a county-controlled cost, and it is one this seat can actually move.
Publish how long it actually takes.
The county already publishes its targets. The missing piece is performance against them, and that gap is the whole opportunity.
Manny's first-100-days plan opens with a single, concrete commitment: a public dashboard tracking the median time from application to decision, by permit category, updated regularly. The reason it can be done quickly is that the county already has the data and already publishes the goals. A 21-day commercial target and a 7-day streamlined target are on the county's own site.5 What is not on the site is how often the county meets them. Publish the actuals next to the targets, and two things happen: applicants can plan, and the county has a public reason to improve.
This is the honest version of permit reform, not a promise that government will suddenly be fast, but a promise that government will be transparent about its own speed. You cannot fix what you will not measure in public. A wait-time dashboard is cheap, it embarrasses no one who is already hitting the targets, and it turns a vague complaint that "permitting is slow" into a number the county has to own. That is the kind of accountability a builder asks for, because a builder has lived on the other side of the counter.
What the seat actually decides.
Real authority over small business, and an honest account of the limits.
The county governs business licensing in the unincorporated valley, runs building permits and plan review through Building and Fire Prevention, and holds the final vote on zoning and special-use permits, with the Board of County Commissioners as the last word on land-use appeals.1410 It sets the departments' budgets and the fee posture, and it can direct the county to publish its own performance. What the seat does not do is issue the state business license, set state taxes, or run a private company. The role is the county's own counters: license, permit, zone, and the honesty about how fast they move.9
Where Manny stands.
These are candidate positions, offered as proposals, not enacted county policy.
Manny built The Kess Group from nothing starting in 2012, so this is home turf. Publish the permit clock. A public wait-time dashboard, targets next to actuals, by category, in the first 100 days.5 Cut the correction merry-go-round. Push for a counter that catches issues in one pass instead of bouncing an applicant back four times, and a single point of contact for a project rather than a relay between desks.4
Keep the counter friendly and the fees fair. The county already markets itself as a liaison through permits, inspections, and licensing; make that real for the small owner, not just the big relocation.11 Hire local first. When the county awards contracts, weight them toward District E and Clark County vendors so public dollars circulate at home. Protect the small operator. Fifteen years of payrolls means he knows a permit delay is a real cost, and the county's regulatory environment should help the people who actually employ District E, not punish them. Pro-business and pro-accountability at the same time.
Start a business, or check the counter.
Practical links for owners, and for anyone who wants to see the real process and numbers.
County business licensing
Apply for, renew, and manage a Clark County business license online.3
Online permitting portal
The county's citizen-access portal for building permits and inspection scheduling.6
Plan-review timelines
The county's published target review times by project type, the targets a dashboard would measure.5
Nevada small-business profile
The SBA's annual profile of how much of Nevada's economy small business actually is.7
Who governs small business here.
Authority over a small business is split across the county, the state, and the owner. The common mix-ups, corrected.
The counter terms, in plain English.
A few terms come up at every counter. Here is what they mean.
If you remember five things.
The whole page, distilled. Each line is backed by the sources below.
Fair questions.
The things owners and residents actually ask about licensing and permitting.
More on the county and the district.
Small business is one duty of the seat. Here is where it connects to the rest.
The Economy
The Strip is county-run, the off-Strip economy is the district's, and the seat governs licensing.
The Commercial Center
Revitalizing the east valley's historic commercial heart, where many small businesses live.
Affordability
The same permitting delays that cost a small business also drive up the price of a home.
I have stood in that line. At 6 a.m.
I did not read about the permit counter in a briefing. I have been in it, early in the morning, waiting on a decision with a payroll riding on it. Fifteen years of building businesses in this valley taught me that small business is not a slogan, it is rent and permits and whether a family makes it. The county is the front door for every one of those businesses, and the seat governs the door. I am not promising government will suddenly be fast. I am promising it will be honest about its own speed, starting with a public dashboard of how long permits really take. That is where accountability begins.
Every figure, sourced.
Claims about counters and clocks should be checkable, and every one here is tied to Clark County or the U.S. Small Business Administration.
- Clark County Department of Business License (the licensing authority for the unincorporated county): clarkcountynv.gov business licensing
- Clark County regulated-business license guide (general vs regulated tracks under Titles 6 and 7, the police background investigation, and the 400-plus license categories): clarkcountynv.gov regulated license guide
- Clark County online business licensing portal (apply, renew, and manage a license online): blepay.clarkcountynv.gov
- Clark County Building and Fire Prevention Department (building permits, plan review, and inspections): clarkcountynv.gov building and fire prevention
- Clark County plan-review timelines (the published target review times by project type): clarkcountynv.gov plan-review timelines
- Clark County citizen-access permitting portal (online building permits and inspection scheduling): citizenaccess.clarkcountynv.gov
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy, 2025 Nevada Small Business Profile (353,621 small businesses, 99.3 percent of Nevada businesses, 45.0 percent of private-sector employees): advocacy.sba.gov Nevada 2025 profile
- Clark County FY2026 Tentative Budget, Schedule S-1 (governmental-fund "Licenses and Permits" revenue of about $441.9 million for the budget year, a broad all-category line): clarkcountynv.gov finance and budget
- Clark County Title 30 Unified Development Code (zoning, special-use permits, and the entitlement process): clarkcountynv.gov Title 30
- Clark County Comprehensive Planning (the Board of County Commissioners as the final authority on zoning and the special-use-permit hearing process): clarkcountynv.gov comprehensive planning
- Clark County business portal (the county's business liaison and point-of-contact function through permits, inspections, and licensing): clarkcountynv.gov business
- Clark County Board of County Commissioners (the seven-member board that governs the departments and votes on land use): clarkcountynv.gov commissioners
How we handled the numbers. The licensing and permitting facts come straight from the Clark County department pages, including the county's own published plan-review target timelines. The small-business share comes from the SBA Office of Advocacy's 2025 Nevada profile. The licenses-and-permits revenue figure is from the county's FY2026 tentative budget and is a broad, all-category line, not a small-business-fee total.
What we deliberately did not claim. We did not cite the well-known "ten times slower" permitting critique, because that report is about Clark County, Washington, not Nevada. We did not assert a specific count of active county business licenses, an expedited-permit program, or a live wait-time dashboard, because we could not confirm those exist. The point of the page is the one gap we could confirm: the county publishes its targets but not its actual performance.
Found something to fix? If a figure here is out of date, the campaign wants to know. Accuracy is the whole point. Reach the team through the main site.