Andrew Photos
Action Plan
Nevada's economy is in peril. Your vote will decide our future. Help me put my 20 years of business experience to work for our community. As your Assemblyman, I will demand accountability and work hard to restore economic security to our state. I have a four point action plan:
- Establish a Government Accountability Office that reports to the state legislature so we know how our money is spent, which programs work, and who is accountable.
- Create good paying jobs with health care by creating a renewable energy development authority to tap Nevada's abundance of solar, wind and geothermal energy and build smart power grids to connect consumers to clean, inexpensive power.
- End the foreclosure crisis by requiring lenders who peddled suspect mortgages to Nevada homeowners renegotiate fair terms.
- Revitalize public schools by putting more money into the classroom instead of an unaccountable bureaucracy.
Below are more details on my Action Plan and innovative solutions to other challenges we face.
Establish a Government Accountability Office in the Legislative Branch
Taxpayers are not getting good value for their tax dollars. The state, county and city governments are not designed to effectively make long-term investments to capitalize on opportunities and put resources where they do the most good. I propose creating a Government Accountability Office for Nevada, modeled after the federal GAO. This new organization would report directly to the legislature, which is charged with oversight over the executive branch. The Nevada GAO would focus on "performance audits" which evaluate the effectiveness of programs, as well as hunting down waste, fraud and abuse. As a Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Public Accountant, I know big organizations typically have at least 20 percent waste, fraud, abuse and inefficiency. That would be $1.4 billion in Nevada, which is more than the budget deficit and revenue shortfalls.
Make Bold Investments In Renewable Energy
We can lower gas prices, create jobs and protect the environment with bold investments in renewable energy. Private companies have private capital and plans ready to go to build renewable energy facilities, but they will not commit until the transmission lines are in place to connect new renewable energy to the power grid. Nevada Power has limited interest is facilitating the growth of their competitors and the Public Utilities Commission lacks vision.
I propose Nevada create a Southwest Renewable Energy Cooperative to act as a development authority for renewable energy projects and transmissions lines to connect those new green energy sources to the power grid. As a development authority, it can raise money through bonds collateralized by the underlying assets, which will generate future revenue streams and cost savings. This has worked in other states. It can work in Nevada. If we reach out to neighboring states to join the cooperative, it will work even better.
Public School Accountability
Spending money on the right things is an important part of accountability. Fewer than half of all Clark County School District employees are licensed teachers in the classrooms. I will fight to put more money in the classrooms instead of an unaccountable bureaucracy. My proposed Government Accountability Office will be a key tool to accomplish this.
Accountability also involves allowing parents and students to be able to choose which public schools they wish to attend. Allowing parents and students to "vote with their feet" can be an effective tool for school accountability and student achievement. I reject all proposals for private school "vouchers" that would siphon off public taxpayer education dollars to private schools. I believe in uniform per pupil funding where the money follows the students to whatever public school they choose. This forces public schools to compete for students and penalizes schools with high drop out rates. It empowers parents and students.
Empower Teachers & Parents
Many teachers and parents I speak to feel powerless to make a positive impact on their schools.
If you look at an organizational chart of the Clark County School District, you will see many layers of management and wide variations in background and experience. This leads to inconsistent approaches to teacher and parent involvement.
Universities and colleges have a governance model that encourages faculty to actively participate in creating a vision for the institution and participating on committees that govern the organization. We need to develop a new management approach for our public schools that encourages teacher and parent participation in the vision, leadership and governance of the public schools they work in, similar to a university that views its faculty as its greatest asset.
Restore Confidence in Local Housing Market
Recent reports have show that much of Southern Nevada's housing price decline is a result of fraud, not speculation. The FBI refers to Las Vegas as "mortgage fraud ground zero" (see "Las Vegas called ‘mortgage fraud ground zero', USA Today, June 2, 2008).
Political battles over tougher mortgage regulation have been on-going in Nevada for the past decade. Our state needs a real plan for smart, effective oversight of mortgage lending and appraisals. Anyone who has been to a closing knows the reams of paper in technical language that is too hard to understand. We need to mandate more straightforward disclosures on the risks associated with non-traditional loans, and rules against cozy relationships between appraisers, lenders and real estate agents. Then we need strong penalties to compel compliance.
Nevada also needs to make a better effort to promote the resources available to distressed homeowners. A central place is the Hope Now Alliance, www.hopenow.com which provides counseling and access to FHA-secured loan refinancing. Cities like Philadelphia have developed creative programs mandatory notification, counseling sessions and loan-work negotiations between distressed homeowners and their lenders.
In Nevada, there is also no provision for timely notification to renters of upcoming foreclosures that will result in their eviction. This needs to be changed as well.
Create Education Trust Fund
Nevada is in a budget crisis largely because sales, gaming and hotel room tax revenues are coming up well short of predictions, forcing harmful, across the board cuts. Other states with no income tax and a significant tourism economy, like Florida, have created education trust funds to maintain steady funding levels. A trust fund separates out money for an exclusive purpose. Having an educational trust fund will allow Nevada to accumulate surpluses during good times that can be used to provide steady funding to schools during economic downturns. This consistency of funding is essential.
Affordable Healthcare for All
The financial and economic incentives in our healthcare system are broken. We cannot have a system that financially rewards the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada for exposing as many as 40,000 Nevadans to hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV by using dirty needles and then not carrying the proper amount of malpractice insurance. We can fix these broken incentives by enabling individual choice and breaking the powerful industry cartels.
Big health insurance companies, managed care companies and hospital chains have become powerful industry cartels with the power to determine what care you receive, who you receive it from and how much you pay. To break up this anti-competitive, choice-limiting, price-gauging cartel system, the state legislature needs to direct the State Insurance Commissioner to explore working with other states to allow group plans across state lines in order to have larger pools at lower costs.
As a small business owner with offices in multiple states, my employees are artificially fractured into different groups. This simply makes no sense. Developing cooperative arrangements with other states will allow small businesses and groups like the chambers of commerce to creating larger pools with lower risk and lower cost.
Better Planning for Responsible Growth
Our community needs better planning for responsible growth. Assembly District 13 represents some of the areas of highest growth over the past decade, in the west and north valley.
Over the past few years, I have attended a lot of public meetings about new highways, new housing programs, new casino developments, and other planned development. I hear residents in outlying areas saying they moved to the outlying areas to get away from the urbanization.
I have learned that Clark County, City of Las Vegas, City of North Las Vegas, and State of Nevada do not act in a fully coordinated manner. Local governments make master plans to obtain new tax revenues by pursuing maximum growth at maximum speed, without consideration of water shortages, congested roads, lack of mass transit, overcrowded schools, the glut of foreclosed homes, and the impact of project-based tax abatements on the long-term health of our community.
Growth needs to be pursued in a smart, responsible manner. I believe investment and building is part of that. But I also believe that it is time for a new conversation about the kind of community we want and how we balance being an urban center surrounded by a wealth of parks, canyons and mountains that provide an outdoor adventure wonderland. There are too many environmental and economic impact statements prepared in an isolated manner. Too many master plans do not reflect the current realities of population growth and infrastructure decay. Being an open, democratic community means citizen involvement in these discussions, out in the open, instead of lobbyists and campaign contributors having private meetings with elected officials.
Protecting Tule Springs
Tule Springs is one of the most unique desert ecosystems in the world. This natural resource is threatened by the proposal to build the Sheep Mount Highway, a proposed new superhighway about three miles outside of 215 to serve as an additional East - West connection in the North Valley. The Sheep Mountain Highway would go over the upper Las Vegas Wash and severely impact Tule Springs, an area rich in Ice Age fossils. I viewed with my own eyes the planned location of the new Sheep Mountain Highway, the Ice Age mammal fossil sites and the preservation area proposed by Protectors of Tule Springs.
Protectors of Tule Springs are citizens with a vision for turning this area into the Ice Age National Park which would be a world class natural history museum and research center to include:
1. World Class Scientific Research Institute and Repository
2. Visitor Center
3. Mammoth and other fossil displays
4. Interactive Paleo area for young and old alike.
5. Paleo Library and conference rooms.
6. Paleontologists excavating on site for visitors to watch and study.
7. Escorted tours through paleo and archeological sites.
8. Endangered plant viewing areas and study.
9. Hiking areas through desert ecosystem.
10. Connectivity with Floyd Lamb Park, Tule Springs National Register Site, Shadow Ridge High School National Science Foundation, Gilcrease Paleo Camp and State Lands.
This would be a new source of tourism and could be part of promoting the outdoor activities of Las Vegas instead of just the gaming. None of this will be possible if the Sheep Mountain Highway is build.
Stop Yucca Mountain
I adamantly opposed to turning Yucca Mountain into the nation's nuclear waste dump. During a recent public hearing on the subject, I inquired about plans to combat terrorist attacks on trains and trucks shipping nuclear waste through Nevada. No one has an answer. That scares me.
Imagine what would happen if a shipment of nuclear material were hijacked. Imagine Al Qaeda terrorists detonating an easy to build "Radioactive Dispersal Device" (RDD) in the middle of the Las Vegas strip. After the initial death toll, the radioactive dust would permeate surrounding buildings, contaminating air condition systems, floor and wall covers, office equipment, and possibly concrete and cement, making decontamination virtually impossible without knocking down and removing the buildings. This would be the death of the Las Vegas economy and community. Preventing this nightmare will be difficult without very expensive military or law enforcement convoys guarding the nuclear shipments. We need to continue to fight Yucca Mountain.