Divided panel cuts $88 million from state budget

CARSON CITY — State lawmakers on Friday approved budget cuts for state agencies and rollbacks to funding for one-time projects, the first part of Gov. Steve Sisolak’s plan to fill the $812 million budget hole created by a nosedive in tax revenue amid the coronavirus pandemic and related economic shutdown.

The Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee voted 15-7 along party lines to approve the cuts that together totaled about $88 million for the current fiscal year that ends June 30.

Republican lawmakers, all of whom voted against the move, re-upped their criticisms of Sisolak’s handling of the budget cuts.

Senate Minority Leader James Settelmeyer, R-Minden, said that the state should have been working on the cuts soon after the Sisolak’s order to close casinos came down in mid-March.

Sisolak asked state agencies to submit proposed 4 percent budget cuts for the current fiscal year and 6-14 percent cuts for the next fiscal year on April 3, about two weeks after he issued directives that closed casinos and most other businesses deemed nonessential in order to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the state.

“I appreciate the fact that we have an emergency, but I think that emergency could have been made a lot softer if we would have done this planning and cuts sooner,” Settelmeyer said.

Other Republicans said that not enough information has been shared with lawmakers before the time came to approve the cuts and called for more collaboration as the process moves forward.

Assemblywoman Teresa Benitez-Thompson, D-Reno, voted for the motion but wants to see better information sharing between the two branches of government.

“I’ll be supporting the motion,” she said. “But I do want to encourage a greater flow of information so that as legislators, we’re able to talk with our constituents about more details of what we’re doing and what our actions mean, and also so that the public would have more details about what these actions are.”

But given the sudden onset of the economic crisis and time crunch to finalize the cuts before the end of the fiscal year, Sen. Joyce Woodhouse, D-Henderson, said that the piecemeal approach is the most appropriate way forward. She added that staff has to do the research on the cuts, and see what’s possible through the interim committee, and what can only be done by the full Legislature, among other things.

“We have to start down the road today. It’d be wonderful if we had the best of all things and be able to have a chart or a list that shows every single thing and had it all in one meeting. That’s not possible,” Woodhouse said.

There was significant backlash from state employee union representatives at the governor’s plan to implement furloughs for all state workers starting in July, to the tune of one day per month. While that plan attracted most of the public outcry during the meeting, it was not up for discussion or a vote Friday.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.