In new phase of the immunization effort, community groups take a grassroots approach to getting out the vaccine

Members of a joint budget committee on Monday approved closing the state employee pension system’s budget with the addition of a new investment officer alongside Edmundson to help manage PERS’s $54 billion in assets. The new position comes with a base annual salary of $189,222 along with benefits, paid for by PERS administration fees.

Sisolak delivered prepared remarks and spoke to reporters briefly on Wednesday, just a day after the state’s Economic Forum released new revenue forecasts estimating that taxes flowing into the state’s general fund will be about $910 million more than initial forecasts in December — including a $586 million upward revision for the upcoming two-year budget.

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) is defending a groundwater report that reduced the extent of uranium and arsenic contamination linked to the former Anaconda Copper Mine in Yerington, an agricultural town about 70 miles from Reno.

Unending rules-changes, multiplying paperwork and the continuing specter of COVID-19 has meant that even as colleges and universities prepare for a “new normal” this fall, complete with increased in-person instruction, the number of international students expected to return remains far below pre-pandemic levels.

There is near-universal agreement that the state of health care in Nevada leaves something to be desired. Where there is less agreement, though, is what should be done about it.

Mario Sandoval was a waiter at Binion's Gambling Hall and Hotel’s steakhouse in downtown Las Vegas for 36 years but has not worked since mid-March of 2020 — when casinos were closed because of the pandemic — along with thousands of Nevadans in the tourism and hotel industry.

The revised forecast is a marked improvement from the Economic Forum’s last revenue forecast from December, when the five-member panel of appointed economists and analysts projected general fund revenues of $8.5 billion over the next two years — down about half a billion dollars from the prior budget cycle. This time, the Forum projected $4.4 billion in the fiscal year that starts in July, and $4.7 billion for the following fiscal year, for a total of $9.1 billion in the next biennium — a $586 million upward revision.

This week’s Indy Environment newsletter asks readers to share stories about the impact of heat. As the climate changes, temperatures are increasing across the state and the region. Yet the struggles that people face dealing with heat are often hidden, and it seems that they are rarely discussed and rarely factored into policy. We want to hear your stories.

It’s another bump along the way for businesses during the pandemic, which brought layoffs, closures, capacity-restricted reopenings, reimagined operating models and, lately, pent-up customer demand as COVID-19 vaccines multiply and people clamor for a return to some semblance of normal.