Truth Through
In-Depth Investigative Reporting

Assembly Speaker and North Las Vegas Assistant Fire Chief John Oceguera has repeatedly insisted publicly that he worked and was paid by the City of North Las Vegas for “only” nine hours a week during this year’s legislative session in Carson City when he was also being paid as a…

The federal government has spent over $440 million subsidizing Nevada’s “green economy,” yet imported nuclear energy provides more power to Nevada customers than taxpayer-subsidized electricity generators such as solar, wind and biofuel. According to recently updated data from NV Energy, since the stimulus passed in February 2009, imported nuclear energy…

For more than a decade, the Clark County school board has celebrated the board’s use of Policy Governance®, the board leadership paradigm created and taught by Dr. John Carver. Under the Policy Governance® paradigm, the board gives the superintendent broadly written policies describing the outcomes the board expects and describing…

The Clark County School District’s new superintendent, Dwight Jones, was hired to be a “game changer.” What district trustees increasingly signal from their dais, however, is — at best — ambivalence about actually allowing him to change the game. Jones quickly separated himself from the status quo in January, when he…

Responding to a Nevada Journal news story, the North Las Vegas Fire Department on Wednesday released copies of previously undisclosed employment agreements with Nevada Assembly Speaker John Oceguera, who also is the department’s assistant fire chief.   The documents describe schedules outlining the assemblyman’s fire department work obligations during the…

While leading Assembly Democrats in Carson City the last four years as majority leader and then speaker, John Oceguera was also drawing full-time pay as a City of North Las Vegas fireman, according to city fire department records. Oceguera and Fire Chief Al Gillespie, however, say the records are inaccurate.…

  While higher unemployment numbers usually gain more attention than higher electricity rates, two new policy studies indicate Nevada’s renewable portfolio standards may increase both rates. Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute studied renewable portfolio standards (RPS) in New Mexico and Oregon and projected that, as a result of those standards,…

Nevada residents, encouraged by politicians to “go green” to save energy, are being hit with higher rates for doing so. And more rate increases are in the pipeline. Beginning July 1, courtesy of state renewable-energy laws and the state Public Utilities Commission, ratepayers will pay an additional 3.4 percent to…

Lawmakers spent 89 session days drawing their first redistricting maps, but Assembly Democrats managed to produce “revised” maps only three days after Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed the first set. Assembly Democrats introduced their new maps — in AB566 — Tuesday, May 17 during an Assembly Legislative Operations and Elections committee…

While Democrats have criticized Republican redistricting maps for “packed” districts and for making the Hispanic vote “negligible,” a closer examination of the plans shows the Republican maps would give Hispanics more power than do Democrat-proposed maps. Although Nevada’s Hispanic population grew by 80 percent over the last decade and Hispanics…

Obamacare — officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA — is quietly playing Santa Claus with public dollars to the Obama administration’s Nevada union allies. A little-known provision in PPACA created the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) to subsidize employer-sponsored health benefit programs for early retirees.…

The Nevada Ethics Commission has determined that the superintendent of the Clark County School District — one of Nevada’s most powerful government positions — is not a public officer as defined by Nevada’s ethics laws, nor subject to state financial-disclosure rules.   Current Superintendent Dwight Jones had asked the commission…

Politically sponsored energy projects across the country that were funded with federal “stimulus” dollars also received preferential regulatory treatment over private-sector projects, Nevada Journal has learned. Not only did the projects receive billions of taxpayer stimulus — “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” — dollars, but Congress mandated that federal regulators also usher the…