CARSON CITY -- A bill that would transfer the oversight of the University Medical Center from the Clark County Commission to an appointed board of trustees was introduced in the state Senate on Monday.

Senate Bill 533 would create the 35-member Blue Ribbon Committee on County Hospitals to review the operation of the hospital. The panel would be appointed by the Clark County Commission and could include no more than two members of the commission.

The new group would create from its membership a nominating committee, which would pick 11 Clark County residents to serve as the board of hospital trustees. Board terms would be for two years. The board would look at the feasibility of conveying or leasing the public hospital to a nonprofit corporation.

The current operating structure for UMC is that the hospital chief executive officer reports to the county manager, who reports to the commission.

The bill, introduced by the Senate Human Resources and Education Committee, would require the hospital board to contract with a professional management company to run the facility on a day-to-day basis through at least July 1, 2012.

The bill calls for a performance audit on the hospital by the legislative auditor.

Sen. Maurice Washington, R-Sparks, chairman of the Human Resources and Education panel, said the bill comes from concern about the viability of the public hospital.

"We have some concerns about management and loss of revenue," he said. "We want to take a look at whether there are some management and operation issues that we can implement.

"It's still a public hospital, and it has a tremendous effect on our health care delivery system," Washington said.

Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, said he was involved to a limited degree in the discussions that produced the bill.

The hospital is losing $5 million a month, and the state is responsible for the financial ramifications of the budget problems at the hospital, Beers said.

"The taxpayers are the ones on the hook," he said.

Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said the hospital needs more oversight, but she questioned whether the Legislature should be dictating how that should be accomplished.

If the state starts dictating what should be done regarding UMC, that might make the state more financially liable, Titus said.

Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury was taken aback by the proposed change in hospital oversight and said it's not something he would readily embrace.

"I'm just mystified as to what that would entail," Woodbury said. "I'm open to any and all suggestions, but this one seems a bit bizarre."

The idea is not one that legislators broached with him before the bill draft was introduced.

Woodbury said that on his last trip to Carson City, Beers discussed the idea of operating UMC as a not-for-profit hospital corporation, but no one mentioned creating a new oversight body for the financially beleaguered institution.

Woodbury said that in the past, the county has formed outside task forces to look at improving UMC's operations, but those improvements are hindered by the hospital's operating reality.

It's the medical provider of last resort to people of limited financial means, Woodbury said, and it treats everyone, including those without the ability to pay.

"There's no question the county will have a lot of dialogue with legislators on this issue," Woodbury said. "In the meantime, we'll continue to do the best we can with the structure we have in place."

The bill to change the way the hospital is managed was just one of dozens of new bills introduced on another deadline to move the legislative process along.

Other bills introduced by the Senate and Assembly included the following:

• Senate Bill 534, which would allow a school district superintendant to extend the jurisdiction of school police officers to issue traffic citations.

• Senate Bill 516, which would increase the pay to elected county officials. In Clark County, the pay of the sheriff would rise 16.85 percent from $134,263 to $156,892 on July 1. Clark County commissioners could vote to increase their own pay by 43.5 percent from $68,390 to $98,142.

• Senate Bill 469, which would increase the amount of money being transferred from the state's abandoned property trust to support the Millennium Scholarship. The bill would increase the transfer from $7.6 million this year to $10.4 million a year.

The additional support from the state general fund would ensure sufficient funds to continue to provide the $10,000 scholarships to high school graduates into the foreseeable future, possibly through 2060.

• Senate Bill 448, which would ensure that the Department of Taxation could continue to hold taxpayer appeals in closed session if requested by the taxpayer.

The measure mirrors a temporary regulation adopted by the Tax Commission earlier this year. It requires public disclosure of the vote, which would continue to be made by the commission in private.

• Assembly Bill 601, which would authorize state employees to engage in collective bargaining.

• Senate Bill 514, which would create a new state park, Monte Cristo State Park, in Esmeralda County.

Review-Journal writer Lisa Kim Bach and Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel contributed to this report.