Brian Sandoval

CARSON CITY – The logic of Gov. Brian Sandoval goes something like this: If you’re going to make me do it, let me do it my way.

By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
Until now, tenured faculty at Nevada’s universities have avoided the budget guillotine that has chopped away at the state budget.
They escaped salary cuts during the past session due to rules governing their pay.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – They have names like the Landscape Architecture Board, the Nevada Arts Council and the Commission on Mineral Resources, and there are more than 180 of them functioning within Nevada state government.

By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
A Florida judge ruled today that a key provision of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee serving in Pensacola, Fla., ruled in favor of the 26 states that argued the law’s provision that imposes penalties on people who don’t purchase health insurance is unconstitutional.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Nevada fares well among the states in a new report that includes unfunded public pension liabilities as part of overall state debt.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has ordered all state flags to be at half staff through sunset today in remembrance of Fifth Judicial District Court Judge John P. Davis, who died Wednesday.

“Judge Davis spent 20 years serving the people of the state of Nevada as a District Court judge and I believe it is appropriate to honor Judge Davis’s devotion to public service and his contribution to our state in this manner,” Gov. Sandoval said in a statement.

Davis was a district court judge in Nye County since 1991. He died Wednesday in Tonopah at the age of 76.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has named Jim Barbee, an agriculture consultant with the Department of Education, as the state's acting ag director.
Barbee replaces Tony Lesperance who quit after Sandoval said he wouldn't reappoint him, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

CARSON CITY – It’s a rare occurrence that a governor calls a federal law “unconstitutional” one minute and advocates implementing that same law a minute later.

But that’s what happened earlier this week when Gov. Brian Sandoval called for Nevada to move forward with creating the Nevada Health Insurance Exchange, one of the mandates under the Obama administration’s 2010 health care bill.

By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Third-graders who cannot read at a third-grade level would not advance to fourth grade under a proposal from Gov. Brian Sandoval.
The assertion rests on common-sense logic, and Sandoval has been promoting his idea since he was on the campaign trail.

CARSON CITY – State officials said today they are pleased that Gov. Brian Sandoval has proposed continuing the Guinn Millennium Scholarship program in his budget, including a one-time infusion of $10 million from the general fund to keep it solvent through 2016.
“I was pleased to see that,” said Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, in a budget hearing today.

By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY — Nevada’s primary education system would change dramatically under the proposals Gov. Brian Sandoval delivered tonight in his State of the State address.
He would use student achievement data to evaluate educators, provide merit pay for effective teachers and end extra pay for longevity and advanced degree attainment.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Gov. Brian Sandoval today said he will embark on a multifaceted approach to rebuilding Nevada’s economy by assisting in private-sector job growth, including the creation of a $10 million “Catalyst Fund” to provide one-time incentives to businesses that want to relocate to the state.

By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Nevada’s unemployment-insurance benefit fund could be in the red until 2018 as the state continues to borrow from the federal government to keep sending unemployment checks.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – A coalition of construction industry groups today advocated for a tax increase to fund public works projects around the state to help put people back to work.
The Building Jobs Coalition presented its proposal, called the “Creating 100,000 Jobs” report, in press conferences in both Las Vegas and Reno.

By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
Gov. Brian Sandoval has appointed a veteran administrator to keep up the fight against placing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Southern Nevada.
Joseph C. Strolin, formerly a planning division administrator for the Agency for Nuclear Projects, has agreed to be acting director of the agency until the governor can find a permanent director.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Nevada’s budget process is broken and needs fundamental change to bring about reasonable spending and improved performance in public education and the delivery of other government services, a free market think tank says in a new report.

By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Gov. Brian Sandoval has proposed spending an estimated $60 million to repay interest on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loans.
That $60 million would come out of the general fund, said Dale Erquiaga, the governor’s senior adviser. This would leave less money for health care, education and other vital state functions in the general fund.

By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
Driving down debt and reining in federal spending might not two things people normally associate with Sen. Harry Reid, but that’s what he spent most of this time addressing on television tonight.
“We cannot sustain the spending of this country,” the Democrat said. “We cannot wind up being a Greece or an Ireland and default on our debt.”

Steve Robinson, a deputy chief of staff and legislative director for former Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons and previously the state's top forestry and fire official, has been appointed to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency governing board.

“As a former at-large board member myself, I know Steve Robinson’s experience as a natural resource consultant will be invaluable to the TRPA,” said Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. “Lake Tahoe is one of our most precious state and national treasures, so it is important to me that Nevada has a strong voice on the TRPA.”

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
The Washoe County Commission today selected former state Assemblyman and U.S. Attorney Greg Brower to replace retired GOP state Sen. Bill Raggio in the 2011 session of the Nevada Legislature.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Gov. Brian Sandoval will seek a constitutional amendment in the upcoming session of the Nevada Legislature to allow for public tax dollars to be used in a school voucher program that would include religious schools, a staff member said this week.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Gov. Brian Sandoval delivered the bad news in an email to state employees today: His budget will propose a 5 percent across-the-board salary reduction for state employees instead of continuing with a furlough program.
“We must also continue the suspension of merit pay and longevity pay,” he said in the letter.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – It didn’t take long for Gov. Brian Sandoval to encounter controversy in his new job.
At his first Board of Examiners meeting as governor today, Sandoval had to deal with a vendor dispute over a massive $177 million Medicaid contract.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Gov. Brian Sandoval said today his security has returned to normal levels after it was determined the tragic Saturday shooting of an Arizona congresswoman was an isolated incident.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Gov. Brian Sandoval is considering giving Nevada’s higher education system more control to spend tuition and state funds.
As part of his budget, the governor may recommend a statutory change to allow colleges and universities more authority to manage their budgets with a lesser degree of legislative control, said Dale Erquiaga, the governor’s senior advisor.

In an apparent move to increase the transparency of his administration, Gov. Brian Sandoval released today the annual salaries of his staff. His 17 staff positions, one of which is vacant, consume about $1 million of the governor’s executive budget.
His highest paid employee, Chief of Staff Heidi Gansert, will earn $124,988 this year. The lowest paid, Celia Magana, is an administrative assistant in Las Vegas earning $29,984.

CARSON CITY – Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford has sent an email to supporters and constituents suggesting the next two-year state budget is facing an attack from “extreme right-wing” interests who will use the current economic crisis to “dismantle our state.”

While newly sworn-in Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval hasn't yet named his appointee to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, before he left office, appointed Ronald Slaven to the governing board.

Ronald Slaven, 47, of Carmichael, Calif., has been appointed to the TRPA, where he previously served as a member from 2001 to 2004.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – A close adviser to Gov. Brian Sandoval says there are alternatives to balancing the state budget besides cutting programs or raising fees and taxes, and he identified some possibilities that could find their way into the proposed spending plan to be released later this month.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN7ZRqW9fkE