Balanced budget

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak announced Wednesday that he is planning to begin a special session in Carson City to address the State’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget on Wednesday, July 8. The planned date of the session was determined after coordinating with legislative leadership.

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak notified state employees Thursday of proposed plans to address the projected Fiscal Year 2021 budget shortfall.

Preliminary estimates indicate approximately a $900 million General Fund shortfall, when combined with the Distributive School Account, the revenue shortfall increases up to $1.3 billion in Fiscal Year 2021. The estimated revenue shortfall represents a significant percentage of the state’s overall $4.5 billion operating appropriations for the fiscal year.

Gov. Steve Sisolak has released a plan to fill an $812 million shortfall caused by plummeting tax revenues amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as business closures earlier this spring designed to halt the spread of the virus brought the economy to a sputtering halt.

On Friday, March 13, Carson City resident Sena Loyd filed as a candidate for State Assembly District 40. Loyd, 36 and a registered Democrat, is an information professional currently working in the high-tech industry. Previously she served as the Library Director for the Carson City Library from 2014-2019.

Carson City’s Montessori has been educating a portion of the capitol city’s children for over a decade. They quickly outgrew their space, and have been looking to relocate for about 13 years.

Now, an end may be in sight. According to Carson Montessori Executive Director Jessica Daniels, the school has been looking at the vacant Silver State Charter School complex on Fairview since Silver State shut its doors. After funding fell out more than once, they’re at it again, and a tentative offer of over one million dollars has been offered for the space.

Gov. Brian Sandoval expressed his gratitude Thursday to the Nevada Legislature for responding to his requests as outlined in his State of the State address in January of this year.

Nevada was once a nationwide model of fiscal rectitude. Not now.

During the Great Depression, state leaders even launched a promotional campaign called "One Sound State" boasting of this fact. It advertised a state with "no income tax, no inheritance tax, no sales tax, no tax on intangibles, but with a balanced budget and a surplus."

To promote our mandate as outlined below, The People hereby contribute the first billion dollars to your Presidential campaign fund. If you need more to avoid accepting any special interest donations, just ask and every true American will donate. You are our champion for saving the American dream.

In our last column, we explained that the defeat of efforts to repeal the commerce tax shows that Nevada’s political establishment – controlled by Big Gaming and Big Unions – owns not only many officeholders of both political parties, but much of state and local government.

We said that Nevada’s supreme court justices, as loyal members of the establishment, manufactured a bogus excuse to upset the referendum effort. Today we explain why the court’s decision was political.

Today we’re thankful that the widely despised Commerce Tax is moving toward a Nevada voter referendum.

Acting for the concerned citizens of RIP Commerce Tax, Inc., Ron filed a referendum petition on that tax in October. Tax-hike advocates brought a meritless law suit seeking to deny you a vote on it. RIP filed its answer, and a hearing on the case will be held 9 AM Wednesday, December 2 at Carson City’s court house. After defeating this suit, we’ll have legions of folks gathering signatures to put it to a vote next November.

Last week, Assistant Controller Geoffrey Lawrence and I presented to the Legislature the state budget we developed with some Assembly members, professionals and business people as an alternative to the Governor’s proposal.

Las Vegas left-wing pundit Steve Sebelius trashed it and us. No surprise because he’s an aggressive tax-spend-regulate statist PC liberal, while our proposals are the antidote to such maladies. What was surprising is the ignorance, laziness, carelessness and possible malice and dishonesty in his attacks. They demonstrate the sorry state of much journalism today.

Congressman Mark Amodei, who represents Nevada congressional District 2 which includes Carson City, said Wednesday that he returned around $125,000 in unspent office funds from his 2014 budget to the U.S. Treasury to be applied toward deficit reduction.

It represents nearly 10 percent of his office budget for that year. Amodei returned $104,000 from his 2013 budget to the Treasury. Since his election in September 2011, Amodei has returned approximately $495,000.

North Las Vegas plans to have a balanced budget for the next fiscal year, but it isn’t out of the woods yet, the city’s finance director said Wednesday to City Council members....

Las Vegas leaders plan Wednesday to unveil the city’s first balanced budget in nearly a decade, a $524 million preliminary spending plan that includes some $3 million to hire 35 new employees....

I recently received an overly large mailer from PK O'Neill, a candidate for Assembly District 40. What he says is disturbing. He pontificates without solutions. He seems more concerned with cliches than real issues.

PK is not alone when making political claims. For another example, see Maizie Harris Jesse's letter “Candidates need to research lt.gov.job duties” in 17 October Nevada Appeal.

PK on the Public Employees' Retirement System (PERS)

Orwellian NEW-Speak: Budget Cut Language Engineering

Does anyone out there actually believe that Congressional sequestration results in budget cuts? The federal spending under sequestration goes up every year without congress even passing a budget. If the automatic baseline budget grows less than is required by law then Washington, our media, and the New-speak columnists misinform the people of our nation that there has been a cut when in fact spending is increasing. There are no cuts which is why spending goes up each year.

At the last Board of Supervisor meeting, the public (citizens) were cleared from the room so that City Staff and the Board members could discuss issues relating to the Budget.

The conversation centered on the budgeted items – those completed – vs. – incomplete, the later an unmet challenge. The challenge: fiscal responsibility - vs. - the unmet needs of each department.

As Prepared for Delivery Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013:

Madam Speaker, Mr. President, Distinguished Members of the Legislature, Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court, Constitutional Officers, Senator Heller, honored guests…...

As a matter of law, the Nevada state constitution requires a balanced budget. As a matter of economic law and history, raising taxes will never balance a budget. It never has and never will. If a budget cannot be balanced without tax increases, it will never be balanced afterwards. The reason is simple, raising taxes decreases tax revenues and strangles growth. Many Nevada taxpayers believe that our legislators seek to redistribute our tax dollars to buy votes or political power rather than serve the public good.

I attended a League of Women Voters' meeting last week ( October 16th). I may be have been dreaming, but people were mostly civil to each other. It was a refreshing change from so many discussions I've observed over the past two years. . . mostly angry shouting matches. Marilee Swirczek wrote recently about the "shout-out" at WNC which turned unruly when some opponents of the City Center Project started pushing and shoving an invited guest. I'm glad I wasn't there.

RENO – Gov. Mitt Romney fired up a crowd of about 2,000 enthusiastic Northern Nevada  voters today, urging them to get to the polls and help him take the battleground state that is Nevada 13 days from now.

Romney told the crowd that President Obama is out of ideas, out of excuses and will be out of office come Nov. 6.

The president, “doesn’t understand what it takes to get this economy going, he doesn’t have a plan to get jobs for Americans, I do and that’s why I’m going to win,” he said.

CARSON CITY – Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said today he is not optimistic that Congress will make any substantive progress on a balanced budget or deficit reduction this year given the focus on the presidential election.

But Amodei, in town on a brief recess, said he is hopeful that progress can be made on Nevada-related public lands bills he is sponsoring as a member of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Helmuth Lehmann and Tim Fasano were caught in the crossfire last night as Mark Amodei and Kate Marshall threw rhetorical punches at one another during an hour-long debate between the four candidates for Nevada’s second congressional district.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Brian Sandoval has appointed Las Vegas financial adviser Ken Wiles to the Economic Forum, a panel of mostly private citizen fiscal experts charged with making tax revenue projections for the state.

CARSON CITY – Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., announced today he will back a spending reduction plan put forth by House Speaker John Boehner because it proposes a balanced budget amendment that will protect the United States’ AAA credit rating.
A vote on the plan scheduled for today was delayed, however.

CARSON CITY – Nevada has the 18th lowest taxpayer burden to cover unfunded public employee pension and health care costs among the states, but policy makers are still failing to adequately address the shortfall, a national organization reported in a new comprehensive analysis.

The GOP budget bill that garnered nearly every Republican vote in Congress has been much discussed these past few weeks, as has the author of this bill, the party’s economic “genius” Rep. Paul Ryan.

The part of the bill that privatizes Medicare, dubbed “VoucherCare” by some, has taken up most of the discussion. But when I look at the other parts of the bill, I’m amazed that conservatives are lining up to support this nutty plan.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Brian Sandoval emerged from a meeting with Republican lawmakers today saying he is not willing to consider extending taxes set to sunset June 30 to provide more money for the two-year state budget.
Asked if there was a budget deal, Sandoval replied: “Not that I’m aware of.”