Las Vegas Sun

CARSON CITY – Ten months after a legislative audit first raised serious questions about current and former state employees working as contractors for state agencies, the Board of Examiners earlier this week approved administrative changes to prevent future abuses.

CARSON CITY – A new federal program is bringing $13.8 million to Nevada to lend to small businesses to spur job growth, Gov. Brian Sandoval announced earlier this week.
The funds provided to Nevada’s State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) by the Small Business Jobs Act are expected to help create private sector jobs and spur more than $138 million in additional lending to small businesses in Nevada, Sandoval said.

The newly appointed director of the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation held down two state jobs last fiscal year, earning almost as much as the governor.

Frank Woodbeck, who will join Gov. Brian Sandoval’s cabinet Monday, was, from July 2010 to March, both the full-time Southern Nevada director of the state’s Commission on Economic Development and a paid contract consultant to the state on “green jobs” training, according to records obtained by the Las Vegas Sun.

CARSON CITY – Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said today it will probably be another month before she can publicly report the results of her staff’s legal conclusions regarding requests for refunds from the state by Clark and Washoe counties totaling $123 million.
Masto said her office is still “moving through the process” to determine if any refunds are owed the two local governments. Once that analysis is completed, Masto said her legal findings will be shared privately with Gov. Brian Sandoval.

CARSON CITY – Efforts to resolve Nevada’s redistricting impasse remain a work in progress after a proposal floated Tuesday by a Carson City judge to use county election officials to draw new legislative and congressional lines ran into some opposition.
The job of redrawing Nevada’s political lines has fallen to District Judge James Todd Russell after two Democrat-approved redistricting plans were vetoed by Gov. Brian Sandoval. Sandoval vetoed the measures after concluding the proposals did not follow the federal Voting Rights Act.

CARSON CITY – Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto will not follow through on Gov. Brian Sandoval’s request to ask the Nevada Supreme Court for clarification on Thursday’s ruling that the state cannot use $62 million it took from the Clean Water Coalition during the legislative special session in 2010.
A letter issued by Masto’s office said, “there is no procedural mechanism” for seeking a clarification of the high court’s decision.

Southern California Edison has won a preliminary round in its legal battle to collect millions from Nevada for refunds paid on the sales and use tax assessed on coal, the Las Vegas Sun reports. If Edison wins, the state may face $145 million in refunds, leaving a bigger hole in the state's budget. Click here for the story.

CARSON CITY – After Republican legislators declined to reveal exact data for their redistricting proposal, Democrats refused to give the bill a hearing today.
Then, Democratic legislators voted over Republican objections to pass their own redistricting proposal to a vote on the Senate floor.

Nevada State Prison in Carson City is slated to close in April 2012, 150 years after it first opened.

The Senate Finance Committee and the Assembly Ways and Means Committee voted Saturday to close Nevada State Prison next year to save the state $17 million. Most of the inmates and staff will be transfered to other facilities, but approximately 30 employees will lose their jobs. The Las Vegas Sun has the details.

By Andrew Doughman
CARSON CITY — Gov. Brian Sandoval tonight highlighted an improved economic output as reason to stay the course with his proposed general fund budget.
During a televised address from the governor’s mansion,the governor highlighted a lower unemployment rate and an aggregate $440 million reduction in budget cuts that comes from revised revenue projections and federal government changes.
He used his speech as a platform for patience and optimism, refuting claims from Democrats that Nevada needs more revenue.

By Andrew Doughman
CARSON CITY – The governor has found $50 million that could erase some of the most controversial cuts in his $5.8 billion proposed budget.
The new revenue projections could mitigate an array of budget cuts to autism, mental health, emergency medical services and rural counties. Those services would have been eliminated or transferred to cash-strapped counties that may not have been able to fund them.
Added to a Mar. 28 amendment of $25.8 million, that leaves the budget about $86 million larger than when the governor submitted it.

CARSON CITY — Assemblyman Pat Hickey, R-Sparks, is asking other legislators to “lay your cards on the table.”
As the budget debate in Carson City roils to no discernible conclusion, Hickey is bringing 21 lawmakers, business leadersa and academics to the Legislature to talk taxes and government reform.
“This forum will help get out into the open things that have only been talked about behind closed doors,” Hickey said. “As moderator, I plan to press participants to speak openly about the ‘end game’ here this session.”

CARSON CITY – Nevada’s two largest school districts could increase classes sizes by five students during the upcoming school year.
Superintendents from Clark and Washoe Counties said they would put more children in classrooms to address Gov. Brian Sandoval’s proposed budget cuts.
Those budget cuts could result in hundreds of school district positions eliminated in Washoe County and 2,486 positions in Clark County.

By Andrew Doughman / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Gov. Brian Sandoval today elaborated on the details of a bill he is proposing to establish a school voucher system in Nevada.
The proposal would allow parents to receive a state-funded, per pupil subsidy to opt out of public schools in favor of private schools, including religious schools.
The stipend, or voucher, would help families pay expenses at the private schools.

Here's a news coverage roundup of Monday's labor union rally in Carson City, which brought out a few hundred supporters and a few dozen Tea Party demonstrators.

Here's a follow-up to the Silver City mining story, this time by political reporter Anjeanette Damon of the Las Vegas Sun as to what happened Monday among lawmakers taking up the eminent domain mining issue. According to one mining lobbyist, if you support private property rights over mining in Nevada, you're an eco-terrorist. Here's the story.

A Nevada program designed to help parents with early childhood development is under threat of having much of its funding yanked, the Las Vegas Sun reports.
Scores of young mothers in Las Vegas and Carson City accompanied by noisy children pleaded today for the state to save the Family To Family program that has helped them deal with problems of early childhood. Click here to read the story.

CARSON CITY – Mention government transparency and “Twitter” probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.
A communication technology that gives users 140 characters to share where they just had lunch or “Tweet” trivia about the weather and celebrities doesn’t immediately scream “politics” either.
But Nevada state legislators, lobbyists and journalists are finding more and more use in Twitter because the platform allows information gathering and governing at high speed.

CARSON CITY – They speak of limbs hacked off, death and guts.
In a war of words, critics of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s $5.8 billion budget have lambasted his proposed cuts to K-12, higher education and health and human services.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – The Republican minority leadership in the Senate and the Assembly has called on critics of GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval’s proposed budget to trade their “rhetoric for a plan.”

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.

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.”

The Las Vegas Sun reports the Nevada Supreme Court rejected an appeal today by a California woman who says the state's marijuana law is unconstitutional. The woman claimed she was a legal user of pot in California but was stopped in Nevada, tested positive and convicted. Click here for the story.

A deal was struck that allows registered firearm owners to take their guns into Nevada's state parks, reports the Las Vegas Sun. The lawsuit was brought on in July by a Colorado-based Second Amendment foundation.

CARSON CITY – Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce President Matt Crosson said Thursday the Nevada business community will not accept tax increases in the upcoming 2011 legislative session without “meaningful� reforms in a number of areas including taxes, education and public employee benefits.

The Las Vegas Sun reports today that a federal court has declined to reconsider its decision that upholds a Nevada law that bans brothel advertising.

Former Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, who guided Nevada from January 1999 through the end of his second term in 2006, died this morning of a heart attack in Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

The Las Vegas Sun reports today that Gov. Jim Gibbons is looking to abolish, consolidate and make subcommittees of more than 100 state boards or commissions that regulate industries or professions in Nevada.

Bucking most Republicans and GOP Senate hopeful Sharron Angle, U.S. Rep. Dean Heller, R-Carson City, voted in favor of the House bill to extend unemployment benefits, despite his history of voting against most Democratic-backed economic measures, reports the Las Vegas Sun.