‘Fiscal’ articles

LAS VEGAS  —  The Teachers Health Trust’s financial situation could grow even more precarious due to fees associated with the Affordable Care Act, says CEO Peter Alpert.

“There will be fees. There will be cost increases,” said Alpert. “[The Affordable Care Act is] a subject [on which] I’ll keep the rest of my comments to myself.”

Alpert’s remarks came during a March 19 news conference where he presented THT’s updated financial report and discussed the organization’s overall financial health.

THT, the main health insurance provider for Clark County School District teachers, has had its financial viability questioned over the past two months since Nevada Journal reported that a teacher union representative told members in a Jan. 29 closed-door meeting that the trust would go “belly-up in 60 to 90 days.”

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LAS VEGAS — As Nevada lawmakers weigh different ways to attract new industries to the state, analysts on both ends of the political spectrum agree that one policy that shouldn’t be attempted is film subsidies.

“I don’t think they’ll create any useful industry in the state,” said Joe Henchman, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation, a right-leaning organization that published a highly publicized study on film subsidies.

And in Louisiana, a report from a left-leaning watchdog organization, the Louisiana Budget Project, calls film tax credits “Costly Giveaways to Hollywood” that “Louisiana lawmakers ought to rein in.”

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LAS VEGAS — The National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, also known as the Mob Museum, fell well short of its original 300,000-to-600,000 visitor projection, but did meet revised attendance projections with over 250,000 visitors in its first year of operations. It fell dramatically short of former mayor Oscar Goodman’s optimistic 800,000 projection.

“They tell me not to say that I believe 800,000 people will be down here, that I’m only supposed to say 500,000 or 400-to-800,000 people will be here,” said Goodman during last year’s grand opening.

The museum, which received $42 million in tax money from various local and federal funds, has a $3.5 million operating budget, according to Jonathan Ullman, the museum’s executive director. The average ticket price is $14.96, so 250,000 visitors allows the museum to make and surpass its breakeven target.

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LAS VEGAS — If voters on Tuesday approve the six-year, $0.212 property-tax hike sought by the Clark County School District, they’ll also be opening the door to a possible 30-year lifespan for the new, higher tax rate.

CCSD officials want the tax hike for capital programs. If passed, the new tax will raise school district property-tax levies from $1.3034 per $100,000 assessed valuation to $1.5154.

Currently, property owners are assessed $0.75 per $100,000 of assessed valuation for CCSD general operations such as salaries, and $0.5534 for capital debt-service, more commonly referred to as the 1998 bond program. If voters approve the new tax Tuesday, property owners will be assessed $0.7654 for capital debt-service.

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LAS VEGAS — The Clark County School District has spent the past month talking up Question 2, the "pay as you go" capital-improvement ballot question, but the district’s latest efforts may have crossed a line set by Nevada’s state ethics law.

About 10 days ago, CCSD mailed out 250,000 full-color “informational” brochures to parents.

The district, which is prohibited from using taxpayer dollars to support a ballot question, did pay for the brochures, acknowledged Cynthia Sell, CCSD's communications director, in an email to Nevada Journal.

"A brochure titled 'Pay-As-You-Go Plan for Capital Improvements,'" writes Sell, "was produced and paid for by CCSD."

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LAS VEGAS — The 42 schools that would receive dedicated capital funds if Clark County voters approved Question 2, a $669 million property-tax increase pushed by the Clark County School District, have already received more than $470 million from previous school bond campaigns, according to a Nevada Journal analysis of data from the Clark County School District. Additionally, these schools received more than $20 million for capital projects from the federal stimulus.

Even the number of schools are subject to change, however, as CCSD officials conceded last week that capital projects “will be added, deleted or modified as necessary,” potentially adding or subtracting numerous schools from the total.

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LAS VEGAS — When Clark County school trustees approved a district-wide building inspection contract June 21, one of them appeared to acknowledge that political pressures push trustees toward ever-higher spending.

“I think we all know on this Board and we all know in this audience that there are political pressures brought to bear on this Board to do things that are not necessarily indicated as needed to be done,” said Carolyn Edwards.

Unfortunately for Clark County taxpayers, CCSD’s latest property-tax-increase ballot initiative fits Edwards’ description well.

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LAS VEGAS — When the Clark County Debt Management Committee voted unanimously to put the school district’s tax initiative on the November ballot last month, one of the votes came from the director of business development at McCarthy Building Companies — a firm financially supporting the tax initiative.

Cam Walker, a Boulder City Councilman, is also director of business development at McCarthy Building Companies, Inc., where he’s responsible for McCarthy’s “strategic business relationships” — one of which happens to be with CCSD.

Since 2008, according to CCSD expenditures McCarthy has received 53 construction warrants worth over $144 million.

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