Joint committee to reduce appropriations

Geoffrey Lawrence

A special joint meeting of the Assembly Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees is being convened this morning to resolve the differences between revenues and spending bills that have already been passed by the legislative majority. The majority has approved spending that is nearly $1 billion in excess of Governor Brian Sandoval’s Executive Budget proposal, which already planned to significantly outspend available revenues.

A detailed analysis of the majority party’s additions to the Executive Budget is available here.

The majority has proposed $1.2 billion in new taxes to finance the additional spending they’d like to see, but has been unable to achieve the necessary two-thirds support for those proposals. At this time, it looks like those tax ideas are dead.

We’ll see what additional clarity can be gleaned from today’s meeting…

Geoffrey Lawrence

Geoffrey Lawrence

Director of Research

Geoffrey Lawrence is director of research at Nevada Policy.

Lawrence has broad experience as a financial executive in the public and private sectors and as a think tank analyst. Lawrence has been Chief Financial Officer of several growth-stage and publicly traded manufacturing companies and managed all financial reporting, internal control, and external compliance efforts with regulatory agencies including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  Lawrence has also served as the senior appointee to the Nevada State Controller’s Office, where he oversaw the state’s external financial reporting, covering nearly $10 billion in annual transactions. During each year of Lawrence’s tenure, the state received the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Award from the Government Finance Officers’ Association.

From 2008 to 2014, Lawrence was director of research and legislative affairs at Nevada Policy and helped the institute develop its platform of ideas to advance and defend a free society.  Lawrence has also written for the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, with particular expertise in state budgets and labor economics.  He was delighted at the opportunity to return to Nevada Policy in 2022 while concurrently serving as research director at the Reason Foundation.

Lawrence holds an M.A. in international economics from American University in Washington, D.C., an M.S. and a B.S. in accounting from Western Governors University, and a B.A. in international relations from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.  He lives in Las Vegas with his beautiful wife, Jenna, and their two kids, Carson Hayek and Sage Aynne.