Government

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons sent a letter to legislative leadership yesterday saying executive branch officials will not attend next week’s meeting of a lawmaker panel formed to undertake a review of state agency budgets.
The decision could create a legal and constitutional showdown between Gibbons, who is in the final months of his term, and the Legislature, over the authority held by the two branches of government.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons sent a letter to legislative leadership yesterday saying executive branch officials will not attend next week’s meeting of a lawmaker panel formed to undertake a review of state agency budgets.
The decision could create a legal and constitutional showdown between Gibbons, who is in the final months of his term, and the Legislature, over the authority held by the two branches of government.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons sent a letter to legislative leadership yesterday saying executive branch officials will not attend next week’s meeting of a lawmaker panel formed to undertake a review of state agency budgets.
The decision could create a legal and constitutional showdown between Gibbons, who is in the final months of his term, and the Legislature, over the authority held by the two branches of government.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons sent a letter to legislative leadership yesterday saying executive branch officials will not attend next week’s meeting of a lawmaker panel formed to undertake a review of state agency budgets.
The decision could create a legal and constitutional showdown between Gibbons, who is in the final months of his term, and the Legislature, over the authority held by the two branches of government.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons sent a letter to legislative leadership yesterday saying executive branch officials will not attend next week’s meeting of a lawmaker panel formed to undertake a review of state agency budgets.
The decision could create a legal and constitutional showdown between Gibbons, who is in the final months of his term, and the Legislature, over the authority held by the two branches of government.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons sent a letter to legislative leadership yesterday saying executive branch officials will not attend next week’s meeting of a lawmaker panel formed to undertake a review of state agency budgets.
The decision could create a legal and constitutional showdown between Gibbons, who is in the final months of his term, and the Legislature, over the authority held by the two branches of government.

CARSON CITY – The number of active registered voters jumped by nearly 13,000 between the close of registration for the June primary and the end of June, with Republicans making a modest gain on Democrats, according to numbers compiled by the Nevada Secretary of State’s office.
Democrats increased their registration by 3,722 to 456,672, while Republicans raised their numbers by 6,493 to 398,898, the office reported.

CARSON CITY – The Nevada Division of Insurance is alerting Nevadans to a new federal website for information about the temporary high risk health insurance pool program created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The pool, which is to provide coverage to uninsured individuals with pre-existing conditions, is accepting applications beginning today.

CARSON CITY – Despite Nevada’s record high unemployment rate, the amount of money the state expects to borrow from the federal government to pay jobless benefits remains on target, a state official said this week.

CARSON CITY – A one-stop shop for businesses to access Nevada state programs and services is moving forward with lawmaker approval Thursday of a contract to develop the first of its kind business portal in the secretary of state’s office.

CARSON CITY – Nevada state Treasurer candidate Steve Martin is questioning the method Treasurer Kate Marshall is using to account for the loss of interest income from a failed $50 million investment with the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers.
Martin is also questioning whether Marshall has the authority to write off the interest loss to agencies and programs over a period of four and a half years.

CARSON CITY – Nevada’s 17 school districts earned an overall “Dâ€� grade for information they provide to the public on their websites, according to an analysis by Sunshine Review, a pro-transparency group based in Washington, DC.

CARSON CITY – A delay in federal payments to Nevada’s counties is not anticipated to cause any financial problems for the cash-strapped local governments, officials said in interviews last week.

CARSON CITY – Nevada’s nation-leading 14 percent May unemployment rate announced today shows job losses are beginning to affect local governments after months of avoiding layoffs during a more than two-year long economic slowdown.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons today announced the appointment of Charles Harvey as executive director of the Nevada Office of Veterans Services. Harvey currently serves as Nevada’s American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) director.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons today approved a plan to phase out operations at the Nevada State Prison in the capital. The decision by the lame duck governor comes even though the Legislature has rejected past attempts to close the facility.
“It costs taxpayers an extra $4,000 to $6,000 per inmate for prisoners at NSP because the facility is so old and poorly designed,� Gibbons said. “Additionally, NSP is not as safe for prison staff as other facilities.�

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons approved plans today to phase-out operations at the 650-inmate Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

“It costs taxpayers an extra $4,000 to $6,000 per inmate for prisoners at NSP because the facility is so old and poorly designed,” Gibbons said. “Additionally, NSP is not as safe for prison staff as other facilities.”

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons said today he believes Nevada and other states will prevail in their court challenge of the federal health care law following the filing of a motion to dismiss the lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Carson City Board of Supervisors turned down a request by Supervisor Pete Livermore to put a question tied to the Nugget Project on November's ballot.

All of Livermore's fellow supervisors voted against putting an advisory question on the ballot concerning the 1/8th cent sales tax increase that would be needed to fund the yet-to-be-approved Carson City Center/Nugget Project.

Supervisor Molly Walt called the question premature since they will not know if the project is feasible until the project developer comes back with a proposal this summer.

CARSON CITY – The U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) today announced that disbursement of FY 2010 Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) funds will be delayed until July. Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., issued a release announcing the delay to Nevadans.
Historically, local governments receive PILT funds in June. Most county budgets are drafted with the expectation that funds will be distributed by the DOI under the standard distribution calendar. Local governments were not notified of the changes until today.

CARSON CITY – One proposal sought to increase mining taxes and another wanted to define life as beginning at conception. A third would have required secret ballots for employee votes on whether to join a union and yet another would have given Nevada residents the right to reject participation in government backed health care.

CARSON CITY – Jim Gibbons’ lame duck status as chief executive became a certainty on primary election day June 8, but the Legislature will add its own stamp of finality next week when it is asked to approve $20,000 for an official portrait of Nevada’s 28th governor.
Nevada law provides for an official portrait of each departing governor for display in the state Capitol Building.

CARSON CITY – The position of Nevada state Senate secretary is now being advertised to potential applicants following the decision last month by Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford to replace long-time staffer Claire Clift.

The state has signed a four-year $12 million contract with AT&T for telecommunications services, including private network, managed internet services and security, now making AT&T the primary communications provider in Northern Nevada.

Ok, so we know who won. But did yesterday's vote tell us anything?

I wrote earlier about how the outcome of the supervisors races could give us a clue on how the public views the Nugget Project, AKA the Carson City Center Project.

Karen Abowd, the only candidate to openly support the project, did come in first in her primary with 31 percent of the vote in a six-way race.

CARSON CITY – State budget Director Andrew Clinger today sent a memo to all agencies saying the process of building the new two-year Nevada budget will be substantially different from past practice.
Given the fiscal crisis faced by the state over the past three years, Nevada can no longer craft a budget by taking the previous year’s expenditures, adjust for one-time expenditures and add inflation and caseload growth, he said.

The Las Vegas Sun reports this morning that Nevada's budget crisis may worsen after leaders took a gamble and assumed the federal government would kick in $88.5 million in Medicaid money to help pay for health services to the poor, mentally disabled and elderly.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons today signed an executive order creating the Nevada Crime Commission with the charge of examining existing and emerging crime problems statewide and seeking innovative methods and solutions to combat those crimes.

CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons said today the political pundits and pollsters may be in for a surprise when the votes are counted in the GOP governor’s race on primary election day June 8.

CARSON CITY – A proposal to simplify, broaden and stabilize Nevada’s tax base by expanding and reducing the sales tax to include services from haircuts to legal advice is generating some support and plenty of questions from lawmakers and interest groups.