Spending

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Assembly Majority Leader John Oceguera said yesterday he will pursue a number of transparency measures in the 2011 legislative session with an eye towards providing the public with accountability and confidence in how the state spends taxpayer dollars.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – More than 60 candidates for legislative and statewide public office have responded to a questionnaire seeking their views on several key government transparency issues.

By Nevada News Bureau staff
CARSON CITY – Nevada’s highway system ranked 15th among the states in 2008 for performance and cost effectiveness, an improvement of three spots from the prior year, according to a national report released this month by the Reason Foundation.
In first place was North Dakota. Rhode Island ranked 50th.

by Scott Schrantz Source: http://aroundcarson.com/2010/09/02/virginia_city_cemetery

There is an interesting discussion going on over at the Nevada Appeal site concerning the Nugget Project.

The story begins two week ago when Guy Farmer wrote a rather harsh column that slammed the Nugget Project. In response, last week there was a guest column by Michael Douglass criticizing Farmer's take on the subject.

Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
Underdog Democratic candidate for governor Rory Reid took the opportunity at a first debate today with leading GOP candidate Brian Sandoval to challenge his opponent’s commitment to spending on public education.

CARSON CITY – Budding Las Vegas artist Alex Krasky was not selected to paint the official portrait of out-going Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons for display in the state capitol, but he is going ahead with his canvas anyway with the hopes of personally presenting his work to the governor.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – A plan released today by Democrat governor candidate Rory Reid on how to balance the Nevada state budget without raising taxes received some praise from a free market think tank even though many questions remain, including whether the proposal includes an overly optimistic prediction of future tax revenue growth.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Nevada budget guru Guy Hobbs said Wednesday expanding the sales tax to encompass services is “not a bad place to start� in the effort to broaden the state’s tax base.
“Sixty percent of our economy is services, not a bad place to start,� he said. “A lot of those services are discretionary services, certainly not a bad place to start.�

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Assembly Minority Leader Pete Goicoechea said today Nevada voters should be asked to expand the state sales tax to include food purchases as a way to raise revenue and broaden the tax base.
But any such revenue hike should be accompanied by a reduction in the state’s regressive business taxes, he said.

CARSON CITY – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle said in an interview last week that her opponent is trying to make her Christian religion an issue to divert voters from the real problems facing the U.S. and Nevada, including the economy and jobs.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Nevada’s worst in the nation 14.3 percent unemployment rate for July does not even begin to tell the real story of the state’s dismal job situation, a state agency reported today.

An unemployed Carson City woman faces a felony grand larceny charge after admitting to stealing a woman's purse from a local casino, splitting the cash inside of it with a friend, and then buying alcohol and cigarettes.

Roseann Owens, 48, is being held on $10,000 bond at Carson City Jail. According to the arrest report, at about 5:45 p.m. on Thursday, the woman was seen leaning on the glass doors at the Carson City Sheriff's Office on Musser Street. The woman appeared to be distressed and an officer asked her what was wrong.

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.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Gov. Jim Gibbons said today he wants to see what strings are attached to the $82 million approved by Congress this week to hire teachers in Nevada before agreeing to accept the funds.

Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – Nevada could find a way out of its $3 billion revenue shortfall next year without raising taxes, but only if the Legislature looks at restructuring the way the state and local governments provide and pay for services, the state’s top fiscal officer said yesterday.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – State governments across the country are facing budget deficits and a tough economy right now, but failure to get a handle on long-term liabilities, from unfunded pensions to subsidized health care for retired workers, could jeopardize any recovery, a fiscal expert said today.

By Sean Whaley / Nevada News Bureau
CARSON CITY – State Budget Director Andrew Clinger yesterday painted a bleak picture of Nevada’s next two-year spending plan, saying under current tax and spending levels every single program and agency except for education would have to be eliminated to balance the budget.

Last week we reported that the governor's office sent a letter to Nugget Project consultant Mark Lewis taking issue with certain parts of the feasibility study for moving three state agencies into the Carson City Center/Nugget Project.

The one big item missing in that story was the Meridian Business Advisors feasibility study itself, which we now have a copy of.

By now, you have probably heard about the fiasco in Bell, Calif., where city officials were being paid outrageous salaries while cutting services and raising taxes.

When the manager of a city of 36,000 residents takes home almost $800,000 a year, that's going to raise some eyebrows. And how did he and other city executives get these salaries? The elected officials in Bell gave it to them, along with $100,000 annual salaries for themselves, for their part-time jobs.

CARSON CITY – Nevada families with school-age children will spend $174 million for back-to-school supplies this month if spending trends track with national estimates, the Retail Association of Nevada reported today.

CARSON CITY – The major funding gaps Nevada and other states have been forced to address in their current budgets will continue in the next cycle even as tax revenues finally begin to show signs of life, a national report released today says.
Signs of “delicate” revenue improvement will be offset by the loss of federal stimulus funds, posing ongoing challenges to lawmakers in 2011 and beyond, says the report from the National Conference of State Legislatures’ (NCSL).

As we go about our business after work on Fridays, celebrating the end of the week, about 30 people clad in red t-shirts and carrying American flags have gathered for three years running to walk down Carson Street in support of our American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I first met Mike McElfish, organizer of the Friday Red Shirt Walk, in September 2008 after he helped coordinate a similar walk in memory of Army Sgt. Timothy Smith of South Lake Tahoe who was killed by an improvised explosive device in Baghdad on April 7, 2008.

The four people running for Carson City Supervisor Ward 1 who were eliminated in the June primary have all thrown their support behind candidate Rob Joiner.

Joiner released a letter today (attached below) signed by Paul R. Saucedo, Norm Scoggin, Sean Lehmann and Gary Schulz, proclaiming their support for Joiner.

CARSON CITY – A dozen Nevada government entities spent more than $1.7 million taxpayer dollars last year to hire lobbyists in Washington, DC and have racked up nearly $400,000 in expenses in the first quarter of this year, according to data gathered by the national group Center for Responsive Politics.

CARSON CITY – Nevada’s transparency website, where taxpayers can go to examine details of spending by state agencies, still does not include a critical component that would make the information more useful.
Budget limitations have put a plan to put contract information on the site in a searchable format on hold, said state Budget Director Andrew Clinger.

CARSON CITY – Nevada’s transparency website, where taxpayers can go to examine details of spending by state agencies, still does not include a critical component that would make the information more useful.
Budget limitations have put a plan to put contract information on the site in a searchable format on hold, said state Budget Director Andrew Clinger.

CARSON CITY – Nevada’s transparency website, where taxpayers can go to examine details of spending by state agencies, still does not include a critical component that would make the information more useful.
Budget limitations have put a plan to put contract information on the site in a searchable format on hold, said state Budget Director Andrew Clinger.

CARSON CITY – Nevada’s transparency website, where taxpayers can go to examine details of spending by state agencies, still does not include a critical component that would make the information more useful.
Budget limitations have put a plan to put contract information on the site in a searchable format on hold, said state Budget Director Andrew Clinger.

CARSON CITY – Nevada’s transparency website, where taxpayers can go to examine details of spending by state agencies, still does not include a critical component that would make the information more useful.
Budget limitations have put a plan to put contract information on the site in a searchable format on hold, said state Budget Director Andrew Clinger.