By the Way . . .
Chancellor Refuses to Make Cuts. The scene sounds familiar: the State’s budget office asks all state agencies to cut spending because of a predicted tax revenue shortfall in the current budget. However, in this case, it’s in Nevada—not California—and the agencies were asked to cut 8%—not 10%. According to an article in the Las Vegas Sun, Nevada’s Governor Jim Gibbons and his budget office ordered a state hiring freeze and requested each state agency to cut 5%, later increased to 8%, and set a deadline to receive each agency’s budget reduction plan.
The Chancellor of Nevada’s higher education system, Jim Rogers, did not submit a plan because “. . . I’m going to try to talk the Governor into understanding that we can’t cut and he must take it from somewhere else.” Instead, Rogers submitted information on the devastation that the requested $103 million in cuts would cause to the higher education system, and suggested that the Republican Governor take it from reserves, raise taxes, reduce cost-of-living increases for state employees, and/or delay highway construction projects.
Nevada has a State Budget of $6.8 billion, and an 8% cut would save $285 million. The state follows a two-year budget cycle, and is projecting a tax revenue shortfall in the current cycle that ends in June 2009. K-12 education, child welfare, juvenile justice, public safety, and corrections programs, and judicial and state worker salaries—about half of total general fund expenditures for the state—were exempted from the cuts.