Posts Tagged ‘Nevada Journal’

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 2009 and 2011 legislative sessions,…

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. “I was paid for nine…

  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, both states can expect to…

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 subsidize the state energy monopoly,…

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 meeting. They then passed them…

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 account for a quarter of…

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. Nationally, about three-fifths of such…

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 for a determination. He also…

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 stimulus projects to the front…