MINUTES OF THE
SENATE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS
Sixty-seventh Session
May 14, 1993
The Senate Committee on Government Affairs was called to order by Chairman Ann O'Connell, at 2:00 p.m., on Friday, May 14, 1993, in Room 227 of the Legislative Building, Carson City, Nevada. Exhibit A is the Meeting Agenda. Exhibit B is the Attendance Roster.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:
Senator Ann O'Connell, Chairman
Senator Sue Lowden, Vice Chairman
Senator William J. Raggio
Senator Dean A. Rhoads
Senator Thomas J. Hickey
COMMITTEE MEMBERS ABSENT:
Senator Matthew Q. Callister, Excused
Senator Leonard V. Nevin, Excused
STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT:
Caren Jenkins, Senior Research Analyst
Diana Gamble, Committee Secretary
OTHERS PRESENT:
Mary Sanada, Manager, Accounting Services, State of Nevada,
Office of the State Controller
Terry Sullivan, Director, Department of General Services, State of Nevada
Tom Tatro, Supervisory Buyer, Department of General Services, State of Nevada
Chairman O'Connell called the meeting to order for a work session. She told the committee she had received a proposed amendment from the assembly on Senate Bill (S.B. 157) and needed a motion to concur or not concur with the amendment.
SENATE BILL 157: Revises powers and duties of state controller. (BDR 18-497)
SENATOR HICKEY MOVED TO CONCUR WITH ASSEMBLY AMENDMENT NO. 418 ON S.B 157.
SENATOR LOWDEN SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION PASSED. (SENATORS CALLISTER AND NEVIN WERE ABSENT FOR THE VOTE.)
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SENATE BILL 351: Consolidates or eliminates various funds. (BDR 30-808)
Chairman O'Connell asked the representative from the Office of the State Controller to explain the proposed amendment for S.B. 351 to the committee.
Mary Sanada, Manager, Accounting Services, Office of the State Controller, told the committee:
Actually, since we've submitted the amendment, we got another memo from Larry Struve who is still objecting to us classifying it properly in the statutes from an accounting point of view. So, Darrel [Daines] and I discussed it and even though we feel there's nothing wrong with classifying correctly in statute because of Mr. Struve's concern we would not ask simply that we delete....section 4, 5 and 6. Those three sections pertain to the unclaimed property funds which Mr. Struve feels, because of legalese again, needs to be called a trust fund.
Senator Raggio asked Mary Sanada to explain S.B. 351 to the committee because he was not present during the initial presentation of the bill.
Ms. Sanada replied:
Basically it's a bill to eliminate the statutory creation of six funds and instead to simply call them accounts and this is to be done just to simplify the structure of accounting. Even though we had talked to people in all the agencies, once the bill came out, the director of the Department of Commerce objected to us eliminating the unclaimed property fund as a fund because of some legal concerns. That there had been
some lawsuits in New Mexico or something. He says the language in our statute is consistent with Uniform Commercial Code. He feels it's very necessary that that be created as a trust fund in statute in order to avoid legal problems for the state. So, based on those strong feelings of Mr. Struve, we are saying let's just drop sections 4, 5 and 6 which all pertain to changing the unclaimed property trust fund.
SENATOR HICKEY MOVED TO AMEND S.B. 351.
SENATOR LOWDEN SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY.
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SENATE BILL 166: Makes various changes relating to department of data processing. (BDR 19-638)
SENATE BILL 167: Requires chief of purchasing division of department of general services to establish certain standards to be used by state agencies when purchasing new equipment. (BDR 27-642)
SENATE BILL 168: Establishes procedure for preparation of request for proposal for contract for certain services requires by legislature. (BDR 27-644)
SENATE BILL 169: Requires chief of purchasing division of department of general services to establish criteria for state agency to use in determining whether to contract with private contractor to provide services furnished by agency. (BDR 27-641)
Senator Raggio presented these bills as the privatization package:
Each of those had a fiscal note from the purchasing division and that was based upon the budget that had been under consideration. Since we've heard these, and I asked that these be held until the senate fiance committee has now closed the budgets, we have adjusted the budget, adding back some positions back in the budget....Mr. [Tom] Tatro was there when we did this and it is my understanding that with that action,
these fiscal notes may not be appropriate. So, that's the reason I suggested they come here today and address the bills. I think what we were looking at primarily was the fiscal note on any of these bills.
Terry Sullivan, Director, Department of General Services, agreed with Senator Raggio.
Senator Raggio said he wanted to go through each bill:
S.B. 166, if we processed it, will be consistent with the action that we have taken to date in the joint money committees to this extent. We have agreed and also this is consistent with the discussion we had with the members of this committee and the finance committee. We have agreed to a separate department of information services. But for the moment, and you'll recall Karen Kavanau spoke to this bill and she had a number of suggested changes. So, I would suggest we not process S.B. 166 at this time because when we do it should be consistent with whatever action we take on the separate department of information services. And, she did have a number of suggested changes in it. At this time I would suggest we hold S.B. 166.
S.B. 167, I don't think there is opposition to the substance of the measure and all of these measures came out of the interim study. But just to refresh ourselves....what this does is authorize the chief of the purchasing division to adopt regulations for using agencies when they purchase new equipment. And, to determine at that time....whether, in fact, it could be leased or rented at a cost that is equivalent or less than the cost of purchasing it. Somebody should make that initial determination and if there's a service on maintenance, whether or not that could be performed more cost efficiently. So, these are kind of basic determinations. And, the language that was suggested was whether the service can be obtained more cost efficiently. But, I don't really think that changes this a great deal.
S.B. 168 was what came out of the subcommittee again and this was that in any contract in an amount of $100,000 or more, we had a procedure where the using agency was directed by the legislature to contract for services. Now, you remember this would cover the situation where last session we order contracting out
for the wildlife department. We also ordered it for the prisons. And, we wanted a procedure where purchasing would be involved, the attorney general, if necessary, would be involved and any outside consultant that they felt would be appropriate could be called in to make this initial....to work on this RFP [Request for Proposal]. And the reason that we did this was because, frankly there was a lot of foot dragging about even developing a RFP. And, they said 'well we don't have adequate information or expertise'. So, this was an attempt to devise a core group and we felt that purchasing certainly should be a part of that core group. So, whenever the legislature directs that something be done in this regard, the core group would meet and help develop the request for proposal.
Terry Sullivan spoke about S.B. 168:
This bill will actually help us because often times what happens is agencies decide to develop an RFP and they do everything you said and they go to everybody and about two minutes to midnight they come in and say they've done all this so now we have to get this out tomorrow. So, getting us involved early will be very helpful to us and I'm sure Tom will agree with that.
Senator Raggio continued:
S.B. 169 adopts regulations to determine when a service could be performed more efficiently. We were using some of the language from the Colorado workbook which are the criteria the committee felt should be looked at when some contracting out of services is to be considered. So, the committee wanted to establish the criteria through a regulation that would be in effect when you want to look for some of these contracts or RFPs to measure them. I can tell you that from the report most of these were utilizing the workbooks....in some of these other states and we wanted to make sure that before there was this contracting out, that these criteria were looked at. I remember, for example, Senator Hickey had a question about how this might affect employees. You'll notice that number E that's in there, the effect of a proposed contract on the employees of the using agency. So, we were pretty all inclusive in adopting
these and the diversity on that committee was pretty great so when we created this list we pretty much accommodated everybody's concern. So, before there's a contracting out for services, under the regulation that will be adopted, these criteria will all have to be addressed.
SENATOR RAGGIO MOVED TO DO PASS S.B. 167.
SENATOR LOWDEN SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION PASSED. (SENATORS CALLISTER AND NEVIN WERE ABSENT FOR THE VOTE.)
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SENATOR RAGGIO MOVED TO AMEND AND DO PASS S.B. 168.
SENATOR LOWDEN SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION PASSED. (SENATORS CALLISTER AND NEVIN WERE ABSENT FOR THE VOTE.)
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SENATOR RAGGIO MOVED TO DO PASS S.B. 169.
SENATOR LOWDEN SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION PASSED. (SENATORS CALLISTER AND NEVIN WERE ABSENT FOR THE VOTE.)
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SENATE BILL (S.B.) 404:Makes various changes relating to state militia. (BDR 36-1313)
SENATOR RHOADS MOVED TO INDEFINITELY POSTPONE S.B. 404.
SENATOR LOWDEN SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION PASSED. (SENATORS CALLISTER AND NEVIN WERE ABSENT FOR THE VOTE.)
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ASSEMBLY BILL (A.B.) 143: Makes various changes regarding county fire protection districts. (BDR 42-255)
SENATOR LOWDEN MOVED TO AMEND A.B. 143 TO DELETE ANY INCREASE IN BOARD SALARY.
SENATOR HICKEY SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION FAILED. (SENATORS O'CONNELL, RAGGIO AND RHOADS VOTED NO.)
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ASSEMBLY CONCURRENT RESOLUTION (A.C.R.) 28: Urges Department of Data Processing and Division of Archives and Records of State Library and Archives to take certain actions regarding public records stored on electronic media. (BDR R-394)
SENATOR RHOADS MOVED TO INDEFINITELY POSTPONE A.C.R. 28.
SENATOR CALLISTER SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION PASSED. (SENATORS CALLISTER AND NEVIN WERE ABSENT FOR THE VOTE.)
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BILL DRAFT REQUEST (BDR) 35-78: Creates recreational trail advisory board and provides funding for recreational trails.
SENATOR HICKEY MOVED FOR A COMMITTEE INTRODUCTION OF BDR 35-78.
SENATOR RHOADS SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION PASSED. (SENATORS CALLISTER AND NEVIN WERE ABSENT FOR THE VOTE.)
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Chairman O'Connell closed the worksession at 4:15 p.m.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:
Diana Gamble,
Committee Secretary
APPROVED BY:
Senator Ann O'Connell, Chairman
DATE:
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Senate Committee on Government Affairs
May 14, 1993
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