State officials agree on budget

Kirsten Searer and Cy Ryan

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Legislative leaders agreed on the state budget Tuesday after several additional hours of closed-door wrangling.

Several sources who were in the room said legislators agreed to about $22 million for full-day kindergarten in at-risk schools, higher salary increases for state employees and several major buildings at UNR.

"We had a meeting of the minds," said Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, who declined to comment on the details.

The legislative committees that oversee the budget were meeting this morning to publicly hash out the plans.

The agreement includes tens of millions for university buildings, including $32 million for a math and science building at UNR, and about $1.5 million for the teaching hospital planned for the 61 acres in downtown Las Vegas, far less than the $25 million Assembly Ways and Means Committee Chairman Morse Arberry Jr. first pitched.

It also includes larger raises for state employees and teachers. Gov. Kenny Guinn provided for 2 percent increases both years of the biennium, but the tentative plan would give employees a 2 percent increase in the first year and a 4 percent increase in the second year, several sources said.

Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, declined to comment on the discussions, saying only, "I think the Assembly is even more spend-happy than the Senate."

Guinn, after being briefed this morning on the budget agreement, said he was happy with the details. But he said the lawmakers still haven't decided on his $300 million rebate plan.

Guinn has promised to veto the budget if the rebate is not approved. "Everybody knows that if that is not in the budget, I will veto that budget."

Arberry said that "Everybody is not happy but this is as good as it is going to get."

Guinn said he supported the plan to give state workers, schoolteachers and university staff a 4 percent raise in fiscal year 2007. The governor's budget calls for a 2 percent increase in each of the coming two years.

He said he has talked to lawmakers for two months about increasing his recommendation in the second year of the biennium.

Guinn suggested $50 million each of the coming two years to improve failing or near failing schools. He said he expected $30 million to $40 million to be used by the schools for all-day kindergarten. But his plan gave the schools a choice on how to spend the money.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said the $22 million for all-day kindergarten will be available in fiscal year 2007. She estimated it would cover 118 schools.

Buckley and Perkins said this would start the phase-in of all-day kindergarten statewide. And there would be money in the 2008-2009 budget to complete the requirement for all-day kindergarten for the rest of the schools.

The $22 million would come out of the $50 million set aside by Guinn for innovative educational programs in 2007. That would leave $28 million for failing or near failing schools.

Buckley said 78 schools of the 323 schools in Nevada are on fall-day kindergarten. Of those 65 are using federal funds. If these schools used part of the state money, that would free up some of the federal funds for other remediation programs at these schools, she said.

Guinn has also set aside $50 million next fiscal year for at risk schools to apply to help bring them up to par.

Details of the budget deal have been slow to emerge after several days of closed-door sessions involving legislative leaders and, at one point on Monday, the entire Senate Finance Committee.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said legislators weren't plotting out the budget in secret.

"We're not making any decisions, let's make it clear," Raggio said. "We've got staff in there, we're grinding numbers and we're getting information. When we make decisions, we'll do it in the full committee."

But even if they were making decisions, the Legislature has exempted itself from the state open meeting laws that apply to other local and statewide public bodies.

The state Constitution does provide that full legislative committees are supposed to hold meetings in public unless they are discussing personnel issues.

"The meetings of all legislative committees must be open to the public, except meetings held to consider the character, alleged misconduct, professional competence, or physical or mental health of a person," the Constitution reads in Article 4, Section 15.

But Legislative Counsel Bureau Director Lorne Malkiewich said legislators can basically set their own rules on what constitutes a meeting. While it may not be typical for all seven of the Senate Finance Committee members to meet behind closed doors, legislators on committees often meet and talk about issues, he said.

"You're going to have dinner conversations, you're going to have 21 legislators on the floor of the Senate discussing issues -- you will happen to have a group of legislators together who may constitute the majority of a committee," Malkiewich said. "That doesn't mean it's a committee meeting."

After some talk in the legislative building about the Senate Finance members attending the closed-door session on Monday, some members of the committee said they were advised to stay out of talks on Tuesday.

Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, who did attend Tuesday's talks, said, "Raggio just came to me and said he'd been advised that might not be proper."

Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, one of the members of the committee who attended Monday but did not on Tuesday, said some members were encouraged not to go to Tuesday's meeting, mostly because the meetings were getting crowded.

"The purpose of those gatherings is not to take a vote or see how the Senate feels -- we already know how we feel," Coffin said. "All our actions have been in the public."

Craig Walton, a professor emeritus of ethics at UNLV, said legislators can make a legitimate argument that fighting their budget battles in public would slow the process because legislators would be grandstanding for the press and not fully speaking their minds.

Still, he said, the closed meetings prevent the public from knowing what was really on the table -- what legislators were using as bargaining chips as they settled the budget.