Nevada Board of Examiners accept donation of Lake Tahoe land

The Board of Examiners on Tuesday voted to accept a gift of 45 acres of land adjacent to the Nevada Tahoe State Park from the Nevada Land Trust.

State Lands Administrator Charlie Donohue said the property includes riparian wetland habitat.

Parks Administrator Eric Johnson said the land overlooks Hobart Reservoir in the Tahoe Basin and is needed to provide continued access to the reservoir.

The gift includes all water rights, dams, ditches and permits attached to the land near Incline Village.

The vote by Gov. Brian Sandoval, Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske and Attorney General Adam Laxalt was unanimous.

The gift must still be approved by the legislative Interim Finance Committee.

In addition, the board approved a $475,000 settlement with Prison Legal News. The organization reached a judgment in 2000 preventing censorship of the PLN’s journal, but the prison administrative rule implementing that agreement was never amended to match the judgment. Acting Director of Corrections E.K. McDaniel said he and his staff were simply unaware of the settlement until it was pointed out in 2013.

“We immediately made the changes and complied with the original settlement agreement,” he told the board.

The Attorney General’s office reported that the settlement avoids further legal costs including some $1.3 million in attorney’s fees.

The board approved a $683,790 expansion of the contract with CGI Technologies to build the Controller’s Office a computerized system for finding, tracking and collecting on money owed to the state by both individuals and businesses. Controller Ron Knecht told board members the total owed to the state is “approaching $100 million.”

That brings the total cost of the project to $1.85 million. Assistant Controller James Smack said that money will be paid back by the interest and fees raked in by the system.

He said the new system will enable the office to use bank levies and garnishments to get those owing the state to pay. He said it will let the Controller’s Office keep much more of its debt collection operations in-house instead of using collection agencies that charge anywhere from 18 to 30 percent of what they collect.

Finally, the board approved the $44.2 million contract with McCarthy Building Companies to design and construct the new hotel college at UNLV. The new college is supposed to be completed and accepting students in the spring of 2018.

It’s being funded half by state general obligation bonds and just under half by money raised by the university and supporters of the college with just a percent of General Fund revenue in the mix.