Lawmakers busy with budget-closing efforts

CARSON CITY -- Nevada lawmakers start their second-to-last week of the 2007 session on Monday with a push to wrap up major remaining issues, including an unfinished state budget totaling nearly $7 billion.

Key elements of the spending plan for the next two fiscal years include funding for Nevada's K-12 schools.

State Senate and Assembly leaders have been holding closed-door sessions to reach an agreement on the K-12 spending and plan another one on Monday.

A big issue is the Assembly push to expand kindergarten throughout the state's public schools. Until the education funding is worked out, legislators can't complete other spending plans.

Both Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means committees hold separate budget-closing sessions on other aspects of the record state budget. The Senate panel also will discuss AB196, which would enable the state to exceed its budget spending cap to help pay off some big unfunded liabilities.

The lawmakers' Legislative Commission also meets Monday to review temporary rules to stop part of the tax breaks under a "green" construction law passed by lawmakers in 2005. The lawmakers also are working on a new law that would override the 2005 law.

An audit subcommittee will meet to review an audit sought by some lawmakers who wanted to see why $3.4 million in fees generated by a college savings program that was overseen by former Nevada Treasurer Brian Krolicki was spent on ads instead of going to state coffers. Krolicki is now the state's lieutenant governor.

On Tuesday, the Assembly Ways and Means Committee considers several measures, including AB510 which would increase good-time credits for inmates. That's a key measure in the effort to ease costly prison overcrowding.

The Senate Finance Committee also has a batch of measures up for discussion.

Both panels also will continue with their budget-closing process.

The Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee will review eight measures calling for interim studies on subjects ranging from toll roads to elections, growth control and mass transit. The studies could form the basis of legislation presented to the 2009 Legislature.

On Wednesday, the Assembly Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees will consider more appropriation measures, among them SB55, a $9 million bond issue that represents a final installment on Nevada's share of a major Tahoe environmental improvement program launched in 1997.

While most other committees have little to do now that a deadline for voting out most bills has come and gone, the Assembly Judiciary Committee has scheduled a work session, and the Assembly Education Committee plans a hearing on SB404, dealing with home-schooled children.

The hearing schedule shrinks even more on Thursday, with only a couple of hearings set. That includes the Senate Finance Committee, which plans to do more budget-closing work.

Thursday also is the deadline for the two money committees to complete the process of resolving any differences between their versions of the state budget. By the middle of the following week, the actual budget bills are to be introduced.

The Senate Finance Committee is the only committee listed for a Friday meeting.