In 2023, the state estimated that the first phase of the project would go live at the beginning of 2024, with the second phase set for a summer 2025 release — and it met both deadlines.

The state's precarious budget situation has left legislators focused on maintaining existing programs. The rollout of the new pay and classification system likely would cost between $35 million and $40 million.

The long-anticipated release of a new state human resources system has been pushed back from June 30 to Oct. 1, according to a memo sent last week to state employees obtained by The Indy.

The state’s total vacancy rate has been cut roughly in half — to about 13 percent — since Lombardo took office in 2023, while the rate for actively recruited positions has dropped by more than 36 percent.

Hospitality companies, which have grappled with homelessness on the Las Vegas Strip, are expected to make significant financial contributions to the project. But it’s also attracted some pushback from legislators.

The state’s health insurance program is expected to use about $7.3 million from its catastrophic reserve fund to subsidize the monthly premium increases.

The five-page policy emailed to executive branch employees Tuesday calls remote work agreements a “limited discretionary privilege” to be approved case-by-case with individual employees and revoked at any time. 

The state canceled the SMART 21 project despite employees believing key parts were months away from completion. Now the project will restart, and the state has spent more than $160 million for that effort.

In January, Gov. Joe Lombardo’s second-ever executive order called on the state’s Department of Administration to devise a plan to pull state workers out of work-from-home and back to “pre-pandemic, normal and customary office conditions” by July 1. 

Already, as of Thursday, June 15, he has signed more than 400 bills and vetoed 32 others. Nearly 170 more await his decision.

Supporters of the bill emphasized that lifting a cap on state employee wages — set at 95 percent of the governor's annual salary, which is roughly $170,000 — would help attract workers.

In 2023, in spite of Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s fierce criticism of the Steve Sisolak administration on the campaign trail, he kept even more. Ten out of the 17 cabinet appointments announced by Lombardo Friday were Sisolak holdovers