Longtime No. 2 county treasurer facing challenge from claims adjuster

Following November’s general election, Clark County will have a new treasurer for the first time this century.

Democrat Laura Fitzpatrick is exiting the position she first assumed in 1998.

The race to replace her has pitted the treasurer office’s second-in-command against a longtime auto insurance claims adjuster.

An elected official with four-year terms, the treasurer is responsible for billing, collecting and distributing $2.5 billion in property taxes across the entire county each year. The treasurer also oversees the disbursement of $4.4 billion in government revenues, and manages the local government’s investment portfolio of about $7 billion.

The office has 42 full-time and six part-time employees.

Democratic nominee Ken Diaz is a certified public accountant. He joined Fitzpatrick’s office in 2016 and became assistant county treasurer in 2018.

The 58-year-old said his experience working inside the office make him voters’ best choice.

“It really does require somebody that knows the operations and knows the regulations that we’re governed by,” he said.

Diaz said some of his accomplishments include setting up an online-payment system for taxes and installing payment kiosks across the county. He’s renegotiated contracts for the office, which he said netted the county hundreds of thousands in savings.

If elected, Diaz said he would continue the office’s work in upgrading the county’s property tax system. It will be a multi-year project.

Republican nominee Mitchell Tracy may come as a familiar face to voters.

The 59-year-old has run for local office four times since 2010, including three times for a seat on the county commission. He has yet to be elected in Southern Nevada, but Tracy said the decade of campaigning will mean voters recognize his name on the ballot.

Tracy said his more than two decades of experience as an auto insurance claims adjuster have prepared him to be county treasurer.

If elected, Tracy said his office would issue annual rebate checks to the county’s property owners and registered voters. It would be a fixed amount, perhaps up to $200 per person, paid from interest made on the county’s investments, he said.

But before the money is sent out, Tracy wants the treasurer’s office staff “clean up” the county’s voter rolls, an undertaking that typically falls under the purview of county elections officials. Several Republicans seeking Nevada office this year — including secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant — have claimed state and local voter rolls include large numbers of people who have died, moved out of state or are not U.S. citizens.

“If (election officials) don’t do it, we’re gonna do it,” Tracy said. “We want to be responsible to the people in Clark County to make sure we’re mailing out checks to the right people.”

Tracy added that he wants the treasurer’s office to launch a smartphone app for customers to pay their taxes, and he would explore how the office could lower the third-party service fee charged to residents who pay their taxes via credit card.

Diaz said the treasurer’s office does not have the authority to send out Tracy’s promised rebate checks and that the money he wants to rebate to taxpayers is already allocated in the county’s budget.

“They’re earmarked specifically for public safety, for police, for fire, for social services, for the school district,” he said.

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.