A joint Senate/Assembly subcommittee stalled on what was supposed to be an agreed=upon capital improvements budget after Reno Democrat Bernice Mathews told them something was missing.
What was missing is planning money for a TMCC campus in Spanish Springs northeast of Reno. Mathews said the developer gave the university system the land but that it will revert to the developer July 1 unless the process of designing and funding that campus begins before that date. With Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, out of the room at the vote, the proposed CIP budget failed to win Senate approval.
The budget calls for $195.7 million in state funds plus $524.7 million in bond money. Another $89.4 million in "other" funds, federal and private, brings the total proposed budget to $809.9 million. That is less than the $912 million in Gov. Jim Gibbons' proposed CIP budget.
Among the bigger changes is the elimination of the proposed $68.7 million plan to build a second prison conservation camp at Stewart. In its place, the plan is to add another housing unit at Southern Desert Correctional Center.
The biggest expenditures in the proposed list are for prisons, some $313 million over the biennium. Some of that money is for immediate construction of four modular housing units to relieve prison overcrowding: $30 million which would have those units open for business by February.
Lawmakers are hoping to further reduce the prison spending by passing prison reforms which will reduce that overcrowding but that legislation is still in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.
Contact reporter Geoff Dornan at gdornan@nevadaappeal.com or 687-8750.