Another deadline missed on vets facility

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2001 | 9:54 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Completion of the problem-plagued state's Veterans Nursing Home in Boulder City has slipped again, and state lawmakers are critical that the staff is being paid for doing a small amount of work.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, called the delays and cost overruns "tragic." He said problems with this project "(have) caused a great deal of heartburn."

The latest target date for completion was January 2002, but Dan O'Brien, director of the state Public Works Board, told the Interim Finance Committee that, to be realistic, the home will not be completed until February.

The $20 million home will cost about $1 million more than expected and is a year behind schedule.

The original contractor, Addison Inc. of Las Vegas, was pulled off the job when the state became dissatisfied with its work and its failure to meet deadlines.

John Sias, director of the nursing home, said no subcontractors have returned to complete the job. The problem is that some subcontractors did work and were never paid.

O'Brien said the state paid Addison for some of the work that was completed, but Addison did not pass the money on to the subcontractors. He said his agency is trying to determine what subcontractors have money due, and he predicted work would soon begin.

Sias has hired a staff of 24 people, who began work in May in anticipation of the home being completed in July. These individuals are working on policy and procedure manuals, he told the committee.

"The nurses on board are not providing nursing care. If we lose them, we will have to recruit them again," Sias said.

But Sen. Bernice Mathews, D-Reno, and Assemblywoman Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson, took exception to the statement.

Tiffany said there were 15,000 people out of work in Clark County, and she questioned why these employees were exempt from layoffs. "You have 24 people who are not even working," she complained.

Tiffany told Sias that the state was paying $150,000 a month to workers "to do nothing. That's not fair to the taxpayers."

Sias said these employees were performing some tasks and, if forced to lay off the staff, the opening of the home would be delayed.

But Tiffany, who is in the human resources business, said there are plenty of potential employees who visit job fairs in Southern Nevada. She suggested people could be placed on the job within a day after the home is completed.

Mathews said keeping these workers on the state payroll would not happen in private business. "We can't continue to pay them. Only the state would do that."

She said she was "looking for the chairman (Raggio) to hold their feet to the fire."

Raggio said it was not Sias' fault the home was not completed on time, and that there have always been concerns that this project would cost more than predicted. He wondered whether it may have been better to have it privately built and operated, as opposed to running it as a state facility.

This is the first time the state has ever thrown a contractor off the job, and a number of civil suits are pending.

State Budget Director Perry Comeaux said the public works board has "had a great deal of difficulty in resolving the problem. We never have had a case where we kicked off a contractor."