Nevada Legislature: Assembly agrees to split up executive Department of Administration

The Nevada Assembly on Thursday voted to break up the governor’s Department of Administration.

Assembly Bill 469 basically reverses the actions taken by the 2013 Legislature, which rolled a laundry list of non-budget functions including human resources into Administration.

The bill splits Administration in two, creating an Office of Finance that consists of the budget division and division of internal audits. Director of Administration Jim Wells said that would allow him to focus on purely fiscal issues in the executive branch agencies and improve their performance in budgetary matters.

That would leave the Department of Administration to handle the other functions including human resources and personnel, hearings, public works and buildings and grounds among others.

The vote was 35-7.

The Assembly also approved SB431, giving the Nevada Supreme Court funding to move out of the Regional Justice Center and into leased office space in Southern Nevada.

Chief Justice Jim Hardesty told the Ways and Means Committee the bill would actually save money while giving the high court and intermediate appellate court nearly 10,000 square feet of additional space.

He said the space across from the federal court would be built to suit the Supreme Court’s needs by the developer.