Senate committee closes welfare budget

CARSON CITY - A Senate panel has agreed to pour more money into the seemingly cursed NOMADS welfare computer project - a 10-year, $140 million experience in frustration for Nevada lawmakers.

SB547, endorsed Wednesday by the Finance Committee, would appropriate $9 million to the Welfare Division. That's in addition to the $28.3 million proposed by Gov. Kenny Guinn for completing the statewide child support monitoring system.

Nearly half of that - $4.4 million - is for penalties to the federal government because the system isn't up and running. The rest of the money from SB547 will be spent employees working on the NOMADS project and for converting and loading thousands of existing welfare cases into the new system.

Allocating the extra money for NOMADS is the "most painful aspect of the welfare budget," said Sen. Bill O'Donnell, R-Las Vegas.

If development of the welfare computer system is on track by September 2000, the state could get a $2.3 million rebate from the penalties paid, said fiscal analyst Steve Abba.

When the NOMADS contract was originally written about a decade ago, it was for just $12.3 million. The cost of the problem-plagued welfare computer system is now $140 million.

Asked in an earlier hearing if that would get the job done, state Welfare Director Myla Florence refused to say yes.

Florence says the system should be up and running within the next two years. But she also says "there is nothing in writing at this time" to guarantee the budget will finish the job.

The proposed NOMADS budget of $28.3 million will primarily pay IBM to finish the final programming and debugging of the system and for the Department of Information Technology to get up to speed to take over the job of system programming.

The Finance Committee also closed out other Welfare budgets, including money for child care programs, which Abba said is now over $50 million for the next two years. That's $4 million more than Guinn's budget offered.

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