Governor Gibbons lays out the cuts…sets February 23rd to start special session of the State Legislature
Submitted by on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 2:25pm
Governor Gibbons has notified state lawmakers they will be ordered back to Carson City on February 23rd to convene a special session of the State Legislature to deal with the state’s nearly $900 million budget deficit. Topping the governor’s “to do” list is closing down the Nevada State Prison and laying off its 136 employees. Inmates will be transferred to other prisons around the state. Some workers too. It will be an additional blow to an already struggling Carson City economy. Corrections Officers around the state will also face pay cuts of 10 hours a month.
All state workers will take unpaid days off, even those funded by federal revenue sources. Those “freed up” federal funds will then be applied to hiring or retaining workers whose jobs are designated as “critical,” thereby ensuring those funds do not revert back to Washington DC.
DMV offices, under the governor’s plan, would be closed Mondays.
Other cuts are in store for K-12 education. School districts will be given the choice to either reduce teacher and other worker salaries or order layoffs. All day kindergarten and class size reduction programs will be lifted to make layoffs easier. A myriad of other cuts are planned, some aimed at retirement benefits and business bonds and sureties. Further cuts will be made to the state’s university and college budgets including the State Millennium Scholarship program for graduating high school seniors who score a “B” average.
In what some may call an issue of “big brother is watching you,” the state will hire a company to install video cameras throughout the state to take pictures of cars and trucks going by to run license plates on all vehicles to ascertain who is driving without insurance and then ticket them. The governor’s office claims nearly one in four vehicles on Nevada’s highways and streets are being driven without insurance.
On the revenue side Governor Gibbons will charge big mining companies an additional $50 million a year, although he’s not calling it a tax increase. He says he’s only closing “tax loopholes” enjoyed by the mining industry for decades. No word on whether he intends to collect “back owed” payments on those now-declared loopholes. Gibbons also wants sales taxes collected on products purchased over the internet that involve Nevada based businesses selling them. No estimate on how much that will raise or how the state will go about collecting those taxes.
Governor Gibbons is also taking aim at what’s called collective bargaining for local city and county workers and for teachers. Collective bargaining has all but guaranteed pay raises every year, in one form or another. Sort of like, if a city, county or school district has surplus funds, workers get “first dibbs.” Collective bargaining is under fire all across the country by those trying to trim government costs and other outlays. However, state lawmakers by and large have opposed dumping it.
The special session of the Legislature begins early in the morning of Tuesday, February 23rd. No estimate yet announced as to how long participants expect it to last.
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