Nevada Board of Examiners OK's project cuts forced by revenue reductions

The Board of Examiners on Tuesday approved $13.24 million in federal CARES Act funds to pay for COVID-19 testing, outreach and monitoring for all Nevada educators.

The contract is with the Teacher’s Health Trust.

To continue the ongoing fight to prevent licensing and opening of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, the board approved a one-year extension of the contract with Marta Adams to assist in litigation. Adams, who retired from the Attorney General’s Office after more than 20 years, was that office’s lead expert on Yucca Mountain litigation for most of that time. She was almost immediately hired to continue helping with the fight.

The Adams Natural Resources contract was extended through September 2021 for $120,000.

The board approved two contracts designed to make major improvements to how Nevada provides criminal defense support for the poor. The Department of Indigent Defense was created by the 2019 Legislature.

The state was being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU argues defendant rights are being violated in many rural parts of the state where contract public defenders are too often underpaid and overloaded with work. Two years ago, David Carroll, director of the Sixth Amendment Center, told as Supreme Court commission studying access to legal services the state must guarantee that local governments are capable of and providing adequate representation to those who can’t afford it.

Gov. Steve Sisolak and lawmakers responded by creating the department headed by a 10-member board. He appointed long time Carson City Public Defense attorney Marcie Ryba to head the department.

The contracts approved Tuesday are $104,425 to PS Technologies to provide a data collection platform for rural indigent defense providers and $51,040 to Soval Solutions to provide indigent defense services, analysis, development and evaluation of the data collected.

The BoE consisting of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state also approved reductions to four public works contracts — part of the spending cuts needed to balance the state General Fund budget.

Great Basin College lost most of its engineering, architectural and other documents for the expansion of the college’s welding lab expansion. A total of $310,000 was originally budgeted for renovation of the existing lab and a 4,000 square foot expansion. All but $68,200 was taken out of the budget.

The majority of the reductions came in two contracts to do engineering, architecture and design documents for the interior remodel of the state’s Grant Sawyer office building in Las Vegas. The first reduced the contract with Core Construction Services from $295,075 to just $59,015. The second cut the contract with Kittrell Garlock and Associates from $4.6 million to just $892,500, a reduction of $3.72 million.

The remaining victim of the economic crisis was the Forestry Division’s planning and design of its Elko Heavy Equipment shop that was cut from $213,800 to $50,300.