Policy Analyst Anahit Baghshetsyan’s op-ed for the Las Vegas Review Journal about the New York City Mayor’s race and what it could mean for Nevada.
Read the op-ed here.
Policy Analyst Anahit Baghshetsyan’s op-ed for the Las Vegas Review Journal about the New York City Mayor’s race and what it could mean for Nevada.
Read the op-ed here.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote an article based on Policy Fellow Cameron Belt’s piece about a need for changing regulations in Nevada. Read the article here.
The Reno Gazette interviewed Policy Analyst Anahit Baghshetsyan about the changes to Nevada’s home insurance law. Read the full story here.
The Reno Gazette Journal featured an op-ed by Policy Analyst Anahit Baghshetsyan about film tax credits in Nevada. Read the full article here.
Nevada Policy’s Policy Analyst, Anahit Baghshetsyan, was interviewed by NPR affiliate KUNR about the legislature’s options for the difficult insurance situation in the Silver State. Read the article here.
Nevada Policy President, John Tsarpalas was interviewed on the American Potential Podcast about the grassroots victory over RCV ballot question in the 2024 election. Watch the interview here.
The Las Vegas Review Journal cited Nevada Policy’s research in its article about Governor Lombardo’s vetoes this legislative session.
The Review-Journal’s editorial quotes Research Analyst Anahit Baghshetsyan.
Article written based on Nevada Policy’s 200 Boards report
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In response to the news that CCSD Board President Deanna Wright’s husband Jason Wright, a district educator, was recently accused of assaulting a 5th grade student and subsequently transferred to a new school, the Nevada Policy Research Institute once again highlighted the importance of transparency in government-union contract negotiations.
“This situation reeks of favoritism and secrecy and should be investigated by an independent third-party to ascertain the underlying facts,” says NPRI policy analyst Daniel Honchariw. “However, it also underscores the urgent need for sunlight on government-union contract negotiations.”
Honchariw says a bad situation was made worse “because of a dangerous contractual provision agreed to by the district and its teacher union behind closed doors.”
Per Article 12, Section 10 of the district’s collective bargaining agreement with the Clark County Education Association, all allegations of misconduct, no matter how well documented, are automatically wiped from employees’ personnel files — with the sole exception of allegations that resulted in a criminal conviction. The accused can then be transferred to a different district school whose staff, administrators, students and parents are wholly unaware of the past accusations, increasing the potential for more students to be victimized.
“This provision — which explicitly serves the narrow interest of the union and its dues-paying members, at the expense of student safety — is a reflection of Nevada’s fundamentally broken collective bargaining laws for local government unions,” says Honchariw.
Due to the outsized political influence of government-sector unions, Nevada lawmakers agreed decades ago to exempt union negotiations from the purview of Nevada’s Open Meetings Law. This exemption means that all aspects of the collective bargaining process occur beyond public view.
“Such secrecy leaves unions free to demand, and oftentimes receive, contract provisions that are unable to withstand public scrutiny,” Honchariw explains.
Just last year the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s “Broken Trust” series documented the real-world harm of such provisions. For example, before former CCSD teacher Jeremiah Mazo eventually pleaded guilty to three felony counts of attempted lewdness with a child in August 2015, his file had been completely wiped of other allegations dating back to 2008.
Had those allegations been reported on his confidential personnel file when he was transferred to a different school after the 2008 incident, perhaps administrators could have taken necessary steps to prevent the later abuses to which Mazo eventually pleaded guilty.
“This so-called ‘pass the trash’ policy is unacceptable and must be immediately ended for the safety of all CCSD students,” says Honchariw. “To do this, the first step is bringing transparency to union negotiations.
“There is no justification for secrecy in the collective bargaining process — especially when such a culture of secrecy puts the safety of Nevada’s 490,000 students at risk.
“Moreover, members of government unions are paid with taxpayer dollars, and as such, the public has every right to witness these negotiations in real time, in public view.
“The legislative fix is simple: Strike NRS 288.220 from Nevada law. Keeping such an unacceptable law on the books is merely a testament to the corrosive, undue influence government unions have over the legislative process.”
A staggering 10,553 Clark County School District teachers were “chronically absent” during the 2015-2016 school year, according to just-released data from the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
Absent for at least 11 school days throughout the year, these 10,553 chronically absent teachers accounted for 59 percent of CCSD’s total full-time teaching staff in 2016 — a rate that was more than triple the 19 percent of chronically absent teachers found at the median school district nationwide.
Because academic research has found a significant reduction in student learning when teachers are absent for more than 10 days of the school year, there has been an increased focus among policymakers and academics to better understand, and hopefully fix, this problem.
In 2017, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found that teachers in public schools were almost three times as likely to be chronically absent as teachers in charter schools nationwide.
That analysis found that things were even worse in Nevada, with public school teachers being more than seven times as likely to be chronically absent than teachers in charter schools — the highest disparity of any state in the nation.
That disparity demonstrates the important role school choice programs can play in addressing educational issues that Nevada’s public schools have been unable — or unwilling — to tackle in the past.
“Students deserve — and need — their teacher to be in the classroom. It is simply unacceptable that nearly 60 percent of CCSD teachers are absent for 11 or more days of regular, classroom instruction,” explained Nevada Policy Research Institute Communications Director Michael Schaus.
“The dramatic difference between the levels of chronic teacher absenteeism at Nevada’s charter schools and public schools reaffirms the importance of introducing choice and competition into the public school monopoly.
“Instead of waiting for CCSD to finally fix this problem — keeping thousands of children captive to a failed system in the meantime — the Legislature should embrace the proven solution of school choice, which already enjoys widespread, bipartisan support among Nevada voters.
“Even the limited options already offered to parents — like Nevada’s charter schools and the state’s Opportunity Tax Scholarships — have shown tremendous promise. The Legislature needs to heed the call of frustrated Nevadans and expand on these successes by promoting charter schools, funding ESAs and expanding the state’s Tax Scholarship program.
“Doing so would finally put quality educational options within the reach of every Nevada family.”
To learn more about how choice and competition can help empower all Nevadans with access to a quality education, please visit NPRI.ORG.
While Clark County reports a maximum annual salary of $162,000 for the position of chief deputy district attorney, former chief deputy DA Frank Ponticello actually received $415,662 in total pay last year, boosted in large part by cashing in over $217,000 worth of unused sick and vacation days.
When the employer-cost of health and retirement benefits are accounted for, Ponticello received a total compensation package worth $475,887.
After Ponticello, the next 4 highest compensated Clark County employees were:
Total county employee compensation was $789 million, a roughly 3 percent increase from 2016.
The County’s top overtime (OT) earner was fire engineer William Hill, who received $75,448 in OT in addition to a base salary of $101,505.
Staggering paid leave time boosts Nevada government workers’ earnings across the state
The addition of 2017 Clark County data has solidified Carson City Fire Captain Matthew Donnelly’s position as the recipient of more OT payments ($110,162) than any firefighter in the state for the 2nd year in a row, as NPRI previously reported.
Such consistently high overtime is made possible, in part, due to the enormous amount of paid leave time provided to Carson City Fire employees, in combination with a policy whereby paid leave is treated as hours worked for the purpose of calculating overtime pay.
Specifically, Donnelly averaged 895 hours’ worth of paid leave for each of the past three years. To read more about soaring overtime pay at the Carson City Fire Department, please click here.
Similar abuses were found at the Nevada Department of Corrections, where one state correctional officer more than tripled his $57,000 salary to over $200,000 with OT, benefits.
The excessive overtime payments are made possible because officers can collect overtime even when they work less than a 40 hour work week by using paid leave. According to the department’s own audit, $2.8 million in overtime was paid to officers who did not even work a full 40-hour week.
As Nevada Policy Research Institute Transparency Director Robert Fellner pointed out when NPRI first reported on the issue, the practice should have been addressed long before lawmakers agreed to increase spending in the department.
“Before the Governor championed raising wages and hiring more correctional officers — further burdening taxpayers with higher government spending — the very least he should have done was address the fundamentally abusive and wasteful practice of paying overtime to those who aren’t even working a full shift,” said Fellner.
To explore the 2017 pay data for nearly 130,000 Nevada state and local government workers, please visit TransparentNevada.com.
Today, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that government officials cannot subvert the state's public records law by conducting official business on private devices or through personal email accounts.
The Nevada Policy Research Institute applauds the Court's decision — a decision that is essential to ensuring Nevadans receive the kind of transparent and open government promised to them under state law.
Nevada Policy Research Institute Transparency Director Robert Fellner issued the following statement:
Today's ruling by the state Supreme Court reaffirms Nevadans’ right to a government that is both transparent and accountable — a promise which has been enshrined in state law for over 100 years.
In finding that public officials cannot hide their activities by simply conducting government business on personal devices, the Court reinforces the mandate within Nevada's Public Records Law that it "be construed liberally to carry out [the] important purpose" of a transparent and open government.
The ruling — drawing on the plain language of the law and the intent behind it — established jurisprudence which will act as a bulwark against those who would seek to undermine Nevada's Public Records Law by choosing to conduct public business on private devices.
A fully transparent and accountable government has long been a top priority of NPRI, which sees them as essential to a vibrant and prosperous society. Today’s Court ruling helps to ensure those principles remain alive and well in Nevada.
For more information, please visit NPRI.ORG or contract NPRI transparency director Robert Fellner at 702.222.0642 or via email at RF@NPRI.ORG.
The Nevada Policy Research Institute is pleased to celebrate Sunshine Week — a national campaign stressing the importance of government transparency and accountability — by releasing 2017 salary data for more than 115,000 state and local government workers on TransparentNevada.com.
TransparentNevada.com — the state’s largest public pay database — is the Institute’s ongoing transparency project, allowing citizens the ability to see how, exactly, their tax dollars are being spent.
“Transparency is crucial to holding government accountable to the citizens it serves,” said NPRI Transparency Director Robert Fellner.
This year’s data shows some surprising abuses in how government operates.
State correctional officer more than triples $57,000 salary to over $200,000 with OT, benefits
Excesses like this are made possible because officers can collect overtime even when they work less than a 40 hour work week. According to the department’s own audit, $2.8 million in overtime was paid to officers who did not even work a full 40-hour week.
“Before the Governor championed raising wages and hiring more correctional officers — further burdening taxpayers with higher government spending — the very least he should have done was address the fundamentally abusive and wasteful practice of paying overtime to those who aren’t even working a full shift.
A similarly wasteful policy was found at Carson City, where three firefighters each logged over 5,000 hours’ worth of pay last year. When factoring in benefits, all three received total compensation packages that were more than triple the maximum annual salary listed in the city’s official salary schedule.
This shows the importance of transparency, says Fellner.
“Absent this type of complete and accurate pay data, taxpayers would be left with a dramatically incomplete picture of the true size of the pay packages they are required to fund.”
Such excess is made possible as a result of paid leave time that averaged over 800 a hours a year for each of the past three years, plus a policy where paid leave is treated as hours worked for the purpose of calculating overtime pay.
Outsized bonus for employee willing to commit felony-level crime by concealing public records?
At the Incline Village General Improvement District, a total of $9,850 in “You Make a Difference” bonuses was handed out to 9 of its 130 employees. IVGID public records officer Susan Herron received the lion’s share, collecting $5,750 — or nearly 60 percent of the total — on top of her $90,000 salary.
While the bonus is described as being awarded to employees who demonstrate “exemplary” performance, the agency refuses to disclose any more specifics than that. Herron’s outsized bonus raises serious questions, given her involvement in the felony-level crime of concealing public records, as previously reported in Nevada Journal.
NPRI reported that blatantly illegal policy to the Attorney General’s Office in early September 2017, but it does not appear as if any action has been taken to date.
Click here to view the full IVGID dataset.
“NPRI is proud to celebrate Sunshine Week and continue our efforts to keep Nevada governments accountable to the very citizens they are supposed to serve.”
To view the just-released 2017 salary data in a searchable and downloadable format, please visit TransparentNevada.com.
For more information, please contract NPRI transparency director Robert Fellner at 702.222.0642 or via email at RF@NPRI.ORG.
NPRI will appear before the Nevada Supreme Court on March 7, 2018 for oral arguments in its lawsuit against the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Nevada (PERS).
Anyone interested in watching the oral arguments live may do so by visiting the nvcourts.gov/supreme. On the right side of the page, there is a “Live Video” player. Oral arguments begin at 10:00 am.
The lawsuit stems over PERS’ denial of NPRI’s request for records documenting how taxpayer-funded benefits are calculated and distributed.
Specifically, NPRI requested the precise information ruled public by the Court in the 2013 Reno Newspapers decision, simply updated for the then-current 2014 fiscal year.
However, because the Reno Newspapers ruling was narrow in its scope, PERS argued they could lawfully conceal this public information in future years by simply changing its record-keeping practices so that there was no single existing report with all of the requested information.
For more information on the case, read the full case chronology here.
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