State workers, other factions expect to feel pain of cuts

Bob Gagnier looks at the state employees he represents and sees their salaries lagging well behind their counterparts in local government by thousands of dollars.

The executive director of the 4,362-member State of Nevada Employees Association believes there's a correlation between that gap and the 9 percent annual turnover rate in state employees. The turnover, he said, is about double that of Nevada's large counties and municipalities.

Gagnier is seeking a 2 percent cost-of-living increase for state workers in each of the next two years, 1 percent less than what they received this year.

But Gagnier is miffed because Gov. Kenny Guinn is proposing no increases for any employees as part of his belt-tightening budget package for the new biennium beginning July 1. Guinn will deliver his budget proposal Monday to the 1999 Legislature in Carson City in his first State of the State address.

"Every time they do this it's the state employees who have had to suffer the consequences," Gagnier said. "State employees don't have a lot of people speaking up for them."

Guinn's announcement earlier this month that he needed to cut the state budget by about $137 million sent shivers up the spines of social workers, prison guards and college professors. Compared to the state's budget of $4.84 billion for this fiscal year, that cut looks infinitesimal, but not to those who could feel its effect.

Up to now the governor has offered few details about his budget proposal beyond his call for no employee pay raises or new taxes. But Guinn spokesman Jack Finn said the governor, who has an extensive background in business and education, brings to the table a "whole new base of experience."

"There will be no doubt that he will have looked at this budget from a new perspective," Finn said. "There will be no question in anyone's mind that this is a new era."

From the perspective of UNLV Faculty Senate President William Culbreth, the 4 percent annual cost-of-living increase university and community college professionals are seeking is not an unreasonable request. In fact Culbreth, a mechanical engineering professor, said the raise is important to avoid a compression of salaries that penalizes veteran employees.

"Typically the ones that get hurt the most during budget cuts are the institutions that serve the most people, and that's UNLV and the Community College of Southern Nevada," Culbreth said.

He recalled that professors agreed to give up merit pay a few years ago in order to help square the state budget.

"Some consideration should be made for people who made these sacrifices," Culbreth said.

Culbreth and university system Chancellor Richard Jarvis also fear that if faculty pay fails to keep up with that of other universities, UNLV and the University of Nevada, Reno, will have a harder time attracting professors in fields such as computer science and engineering.

"In those fields where it's hard to get somebody, you have to be competitive," Jarvis said. "Over a couple of years you may not feel it if you don't get a raise, but then you look up and the rest of the country is 5 percent ahead of you."

Gagnier said state employees already know what it feels like to fall behind their counterparts in local government. The difference, Gagnier said, is that municipal employees have collective bargaining, something his union has sought for years from the state without success.

"Local government employees can negotiate, teachers can negotiate, anybody but us," Gagnier said.

Some lawmakers are sympathetic to the need to raise state employee pay. Assembly Minority Floor Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, said, "It appears impossible right now to raise salaries for state workers. They're paid at slightly less than the going rate, so I wouldn't oppose a raise. But coming from the private sector, no one ever guaranteed me a raise every year."

Shortly before Guinn's November election victory, then-Gov. Bob Miller ordered a hiring freeze for most state agencies because of sluggish tax revenues. The outlook brightened somewhat last month when it was disclosed that October sales tax revenues posted their highest gains since 1996.

The Economic Forum, a group of five economic specialists who make revenue forecasts for the state, also predicted $238 million in increased revenues over the next biennium. But the governor's office disclosed that student growth in the public schools and university system would devour about $200 million of that largess. A financially strapped state employee health insurance program was expected to eat up most of the remaining added revenues.

The forum will make a final revenue projection by May. If there is a forecast of additional revenues, Guinn has said he would restore some of his proposed cuts.

Meantime, the governor has said he wouldn't reduce education funding but still needed to make an additional $140 million in cuts to balance the budget. Early on, his administration leaked out two of the proposed cuts, the Family to Family Project and Nevada Check-Up, both begun by Miller.

Family to Family, which helps parents of newborns, received $6.4 million in state funds this year, but the Guinn administration said it was duplicative of county services. Nevada Check-Up, a new health insurance program that has enrolled about 3,000 children from low-income families, also was cited by the new administration for poor enrollment.

Hints of such proposed cuts have made social-service advocates nervous, however. Rosetta Johnson, president of the Nevada Alliance for the Mentally Ill, recalled that state mental-health care is just beginning to recover from deep budget cuts made in the early 1990s during a recession.

"When people get sicker and sicker, we all pay," Johnson said. "They become homeless, or they're picked up and put in jail."

Alicia Smilley, president of the Nevada chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, said the state should spend more on "front end" preventive care but instead pours money into prisons.

Defending the vulnerable"It's the most vulnerable in our population who could be left out again," Smilley said. "They don't have a good political base. When you're vulnerable, the last thing you're thinking about is getting active in politics."

Social services won't take the only hits. A proposed $3.8 million psychiatric crisis center and a $1.7 million visitor center at Mormon Fort State Park, both in Las Vegas, also were cut by Guinn from his capital construction budget for the next two years. Some of that money was shifted to projects in Northern Nevada with the blessing of the state Public Works Board.

But the governor plans to allocate $17.2 million to the Community College of Southern Nevada for a science building at the West Charleston campus, $15 million to house the Boyd Law School at UNLV and $7.6 million to furnish the Lied Library, also at UNLV. There also will be a proposed $50.7 million set aside to add 1,000 beds to the 1,000-bed medium security prison under construction near Indian Springs.

State lawmakers have anxiously awaited Guinn's budget. Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, is of the belief that the state's government cannot get much smaller.

"You can't make a cut without feeling it," she said. "I'm fearful we'll fall below places like South Carolina and Mississippi after having 10 years of great prosperity."

Titus isn't optimistic about possible additional funding for class-size reduction, which Miller undertook for first through third grades. That's because Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, who carries the most clout in the Legislature, isn't convinced that reductions in class size need to be continued beyond third grade.

"It's obviously better if you have fewer students per teacher," Raggio said. "But as you get to the upper grades it doesn't have as much impact.

"One of the highest priorities for me will be remediation for students who need help so they don't fall by the wayside. We also need teacher training in order for them to be compliant with the new education standards."

The budget is usually one of the last items to be approved by the Legislature each session. It is picked apart by the various committees and then put back together, often with additions or subtractions based on politics and the influence of powerful constituencies.

The general fund, consisting mostly of sales and gaming taxes, generates the most state budget revenue but at $1.5 billion still represents less than one-third of all funding sources to run state government for the current fiscal year. Functions such as education and public safety rely heavily on this fund.

But human services and highway construction rely more on federal funds. State commerce and industry agencies get most of their money from charging fees and fines.

The fiscal 1999 state budget, which runs through June 30, is divided into eight major categories totalling $4.84 billion.

As approved by the 1997 Legislature, the budget includes:

The single largest line item in human services is Medicaid. One of the fastest-growing programs in the state, it provides medical assistance to nearly 110,000 Nevadans a month. At a cost this year of $647 million, Medicaid alone makes up more than 13 percent of the state budget.

The two largest recipients of state education funding are the Department of Education and the university and community college system. This year's university and community college system allocations include $107 million to UNLV, $94 million to the University of Nevada, Reno, and $49 million to the Community College of Southern Nevada.

The system, a frequent target of tinkering by the state Legislature, provides insurance to employers for work-related injuries and diseases incurred by employees, and compensation and medical care to injured workers.

The other major recipients of infrastructure funds are the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Colorado River Commission, which acquires and manages water from the river for Southern Nevada.

The costliest line item in the prison budget, about $30 million this year, is for inmate medical care.

The leading recipients of funding in the motor vehicles and public-safety department are the Highway Patrol and Division of Parole and Probation.

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