Under an agreement signed last year, the state is overseeing an extensive cleanup of the Anaconda Copper Mine amid criticism and a complex history.

But unlike some states that have distanced themselves from publicly owned planes as a show of fiscal restraint, Nevada is moving forward with plans to buy two new private aircraft and bump up pay for four state pilots. The transportation department (NDOT) quietly won approval from lawmakers to spend nearly $14 million on planes, which represent a significant upgrade of the state’s current fleet: a nine-seat jet and five-seat turboprop aircraft constructed during the Reagan administration.

State mental health and behavioral health workers will file for recognition of a collective bargaining unit Friday, the latest group of state employees to do so under a 2019 law that extended collective bargaining rights to more than 20,000 state workers. 

The court’s unanimous decision, published last week, would allow for defendants charged with misdemeanor domestic violence to request a jury trial, following recent changes in state law that strip gun possession and ownership rights from persons convicted of those crimes. 

The ethics agency in Nevada is the Nevada Commission on Ethics, which last year received 55 complaints and dismissed 39 of those. Sixteen cases of ethics violations were either punished with fines, the largest being $2,160, or letters of caution.

“Often the argument for solitary is for safety, right? It's to keep the prison safer, to keep society safer,” said Elena Vanko, one of the Vera Institute researchers who worked on the Nevada report. “But there really isn't the evidence to support that solitary ... changes people's behavior or deters misbehavior.”

The state’s Financial Institutions Division, represented by Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office, recently appealed a lower court’s ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court which found state laws prohibiting the refinancing of high-interest loans don’t necessarily apply to a certain kind of loan offered by Titlemax, a prominent title lender with more than 40 locations in the state. 

Attorney General Aaron Ford said on Twitter on Wednesday that the State of Nevada does not accept the $12 billion dollar settlement that Purdue Pharma, maker of the painkiller OxyContin, has proposed with some of the many jurisdictions that have sued the company. Ford filed an expanded lawsuit in June against more than 40 opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma.

Nevada’s system of getting packages to prisoners hasn’t always worked smoothly. Prisons had been using a system where inmates walked up to a retail store window and picked up items. But that involved inmates leaving their housing units and standing in line for long periods of time, often in the elements, and alongside rivals who wanted to steal their new stuff.

The Task Force on Performance Pay Administration and Support is charged with reviewing and identifying potential funding sources for faculty pay raises. Currently, more than 6,000 faculty within NSHE have no guarantee of a raise.

The department and related entities “are now engaging in a cover-up of the rampant illegality and corruption that infected the license application process for the recreational Dispensaries,” the complaint says.

Marijuana tax contributions have increased by 33 percent year over year, from $74.7 million paid last fiscal year to $99.18 million in the 2019 fiscal year, with another $10 million fees on top of that. The Nevada Dispensary Association announced the milestone in a press release on Tuesday, along with a warning that the state should not take the strong collections for granted.

Monday’s meeting of the Committee on Local Government Finance — an appointed board within the Department of Taxation that oversees local governments under fiscal watch, or state oversight of finances — was less contentious than the meeting last month that saw the board spar with district Chief Financial Officer Jason Goudie over an alleged lack of budgetary information.

The Clark County School District has requested a court injunction to avert a potential teacher strike it says would have a “crippling” effect on education. The move follows an impasse in negotiations with the Clark County Education Association over a contract.

Taxation officials noted that a “vast majority” of licensees will still be able to move forward toward opening their dispensaries because the injunction Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez issued on Friday is limited to licensees who didn't provide complete identification of every member of their leadership team. 

Those meetings and others held between Sisolak with high-powered lobbyists, legislators with major pending bills, federal government officials and a slew of well-known business leaders were revealed in a public records request submitted by The Nevada Independent for the governor’s calendar through the legislative session.

A nascent Reno-based technology company planning to use experimental methods to create a solar-powered “synthetic” geothermal power plant is taking additional steps to ramp up operations. The “RenewGeo” concept and future project by Reno-based company Unified Collective (UC) Won announced in February that it had secured leases at two existing geothermal production wells in Churchill County.

Gov. Steve Sisolak excoriated Clark County School District leaders during a press conference Friday over a breakdown in negotiations for additional pay for teachers who completed certain professional development — an impasse that has led the Clark County Education Association to call for a strike next month.