Budget Watch Nevada

As I’ve been pointing out for some time now, there is plenty of fat to cut from the state budget. This was confirmed by the state budget director in an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on April 18.

Since we all know that government bureaucrats love more bureaucracy and support it at most levels, we can assume that there is a LOT MORE where that came from, meaning that the director’s cuts are probably conservative and need to be expanded.

According to the article, “a projected revenue shortfall of nearly $137 million has been erased with a series of cuts and recalculations of Nevada’s budget needs for the coming two fiscal years, state Budget Director Andrew Clinger said Wednesday.”

“Now, the nearly $7 billion spending plan proposed by Gov. Jim Gibbons is slightly in the black. The biggest single factor in the budget revision was a reduction in the expected caseload of Medicaid recipients. That change alone, state Health and Human Services Department chief Mike Willden said, cut the projected revenue shortfall by more than $50 million.”

Fifty million dollars! Just like that! I say, that’s a good start. Keep cutting.

The story continued, “while there are cuts in some programs, including mental health services, Willden said there will be “few if any” actual reductions in services to individuals. Clinger said he would describe the cuts in proposed new initiatives as modest.”

“A $110 million one-shot appropriation to the Nevada System of Higher Education to build its multi-campus health sciences system has been reduced by $15.8 million. That would be accomplished under the governor’s plan by cutting a renovation of the Shadow Lane Campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.”

“A $10 million project for stream restoration has been cut to $5 million.”

“A $5 million-a-year economic development program recommended by Gibbons has been eliminated, saving another $10 million.”

These are the very kind of cuts I have been recommending for months. You can see more of them at www.BudgetWatchNevada.com.

The largest cuts must come from the two elephants of tax spending: Human Services and Education (especially higher ed). We all survived just fine on the budgets of 4 and 2 years ago; we don’t need yet another 10% increase in spending, after a hefty 21% increase in the prior biennium.

When Sen. Bob Beers offered a bill to authorize teachers in Clark County schools to carry weapons on campus, many people thought it was a silly ploy to get media coverage. The bill’s premise became dead-serious today, though, with the mass murders of students at Virginia Tech.

We’ll let Bob bring you up to date on his common-sense legislation to unwind victim disarmament rules currently in place:

“As I draft this newsletter, the number of dead is 32 on the campus of Virginia Tech, where a man who was mentally ill went on a murder spree this morning. Just last year, the Virginia Legislature rejected a measure that would have allowed the hundreds of people who were on that campus this morning and who hold a permit to Carry a Concealed Weapon (CCW) to actually carry one. “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus,” a Virginia Tech spokesman said at the time. (WorldNetDaily.com)

Similarly, my proposal to allow specially-trained teachers to carry - and, more importantly, to remove our schools from the list of gun-free zones we advertise for terrorists in state law - failed last week in the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee on a 4-2 vote. ”

You can follow Bob’s legislative updates at his excellent BLOG.

Who knew that one of Nevada’s most pressing and urgent issues was our lack of a state paleontologist? Thankfully, someone has come to our rescue and has written a BDR (bill draft request) to authorize this new position. It will rank right up there with the state climatologist for “why on earth do we need that?” status.

Of course, your blogger — a self-degreed porkologist — wonders what really is behind such a move. No doubt, someone with close ties to the education monopoly elite has a buddy who is looking for a job. Seems there’s not much work lately in the private sector for fossil diggers. So he gets a politically-connected cohort to float a bill to just manufacture a job and have the unknowing taxpayers pay for it. Sweet deal, huh? I wish the state would make me the State Blogger and give me an office and salary and all of those nice government employee perks like PERS.

SB 135: Creates the Office of State Paleontologist within the Department of Cultural Affairs. (BDR 33-210). For more details, link here.

This is starting to sound like a broken record (or scratched CD for the under-40 crowd).

It was reported in the L.V. R-J today that the Clark County School District’s original budget projection for a new computer system overhaul was $33 million back in 2004. That sounds like an awful lot of money to me already, but now, the District is saying that the system will actually cost $40-50 million. Unbelievable.

Of course when there is no accountability, and when you just tap the taxpayers for more money to feed your misspending morasses, it’s not a problem. In the real world/private sector, heads would roll and the project would probably be scrapped outright.

If CCSD were broken up into smaller parts, as right-minded realists have been demanding for a decade or more, each small district could keep track of its information and databases with $50,000 worth of software and servers, and probably operate using only QuickBooks, MS Access, and MS Excel.

When you are a large monopoly that moves at glacial speeds, you always want the latest and most expensive system, recommended by the vendors who took you to the finest restaurants in town — cost be damned. And by the time it’s implemented, they’ll want another $10 million to pay for updates.

As if we needed any other proof that CCSD should be deconsolidated, this is it. How many textbooks, condoms, free lunches, and math teacher bonuses could we get for our $50,000,000?