Las Vegas convention officials handed out more than $125,000 in iPads, golf clubs, Bose headphones and other pricey merchandise without noting who received the items or the business purpose of the gifts.
Investigations
The Nevada Attorney General’s office will release the names and salaries of employees after a Las Vegas Review-Journal investigation found unidentified state workers.
A Nevada Department of Transportation worker who helps test employees suspected of on-the-job substance abuse is under investigation for allegedly selling moonshine out of his government vehicle and office in Las Vegas.
Clark County officials are planning to spend taxpayer resources to appeal a court ruling requiring the coroner to release autopsy reports.
An external auditor will make recommendations next month on how to rein in gifts and travel at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority after a Review-Journal investigation into excessive spending.
The names and salaries of 349 state employees, including park rangers and game wardens, are not public to taxpayers who spent $30.1 million last year in wages and benefits for those staffers.
Autopsy reports are public records in Nevada, a Clark County District Court judge ruled Thursday, providing new transparency in cases of suspicious deaths.
Las Vegas Convention Center security officers left their taxpayer-funded posts to drive former Mayor Oscar Goodman across the valley far more often than officials previously disclosed.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s lawyer has received a 7.5 percent salary increase and a 25 percent bonus from the organization’s board of directors.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority hired an accounting firm Tuesday to evaluate its spending policies after a Review-Journal investigation uncovered questionable expenses.
Around 2010, Elko schools halted a longtime practice of hiring retirees and paying them a salary while they collected a pension.
Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, who is charged with policing statements that disclose the income of elected officials, failed to report her own pension income of about $11,000 over the past two years.
Nevada governments are using the underfunded state pension system to boost the income of public employees, a legal practice that costs taxpayers at least $23 million a year, a Las Vegas Review-Journal investigation found.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority security officers, paid by taxpayers and charged with protecting visitors, drive CEO Rossi Ralenkotter and and former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman to casinos, shops and other locations so often that staff members dubbed the dispatches “Rossi runs” and “Oscar runs” in security logs obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Excessive spending at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority highlights the need for a special agency to investigate financial abuse within state and local government, Democratic and Republican lawmakers say.