Nevada Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means committees get budget overview

Gov. Steve Sisolak’s recommended state budget calls for a total of $31.39 billion over the coming two years when all revenue sources are counted.

Susan Brown, the head of the Governor’s Office of Finance, presented the budget overview to the members of the legislative Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means committees on Wednesday.

That includes some $8.6 billion in General Fund cash, 32 percent of the total spending plan.

The federal dollars, however, are even more, amounting to more than $10.7 billion, 40 percent of total spending.

It also includes highway fund money and revenue from a laundry list of fees and other cash the state collects.

The lion’s share goes to the Health and Human Services department for Medicaid, the largest single budget in the state.

And Medicaid is expected to continue growing. Brown said Medicaid will absorb an additional $143.8 million in General Fund cash in the coming two years because of medical inflation. Medicaid’s budget will also expand by $153.5 million in 2022 and and $146.9 million in 2023 for caseload increases and changes in the share of Medicaid that the federal government pays compared to the state.

She said projections are that Medicaid will be serving 778,831 Nevadans by the end of the coming biennium, more than one in four residents.

Between Medicaid and the other entitlement programs Health and Human Services manages — including food stamps, welfare, child and family services and CHIP, the program that provides medical coverage to low income children — that department will consume half the total budget.

After HHS, education is the biggest cost. K-12 and the university system get 46.5 percent of General Fund cash but just 22.4 percent of total funding. Public Safety gets 9.2 percent of the General Fund but very little federal money.

The next largest budget is the Public Employee Benefits Program that provides health insurance to state workers. Its total budget is $1.55 billion over the biennium, half from the General Fund and federal money and half from the employees.

Transportation’s total budget is a bit larger at $1.67 billion but a good share of that comes from the Highway Fund and federal Transportation Department.

The proposed budget includes a total of $491 million in Capitol Improvement Projects — 13 construction and 55 maintenance. Many on the list are projects that were suspended last summer to cut the budget as the economic damage from the pandemic hit Nevada. One of the largest restored is the $73 million engineering school building at UNLV. Another is $25 million to complete the UNLV medical school.

Wednesday’s briefing was the first of four day-long briefings to lay out the governor’s budget plan for the legislative money committees. The process continues Thursday, Friday and next Monday to prepare them for the Feb. 1 start of the 2021 Legislature.

Thursday’s briefing will be completely devoted to the Health and Human Services Department budgets followed Friday by K-12 and the Nevada System of Higher Education budgets along with the military departments.

Monday will wrap up the series of briefings with presentations by DMV, transportation, Corrections, Public Safety and the employee benefits program.