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Nevada Employee Benefits News

March 10th, 2007 Posted by Mark

The governor of Nevada, Gov. Jim Gibbons announced a couple weeks ago a new plan to strengthen the public employee benefits program. I would have announced it to you guys then when it all went down, but I have been so busy reporting on all of the latest developments with the minimum wage that I did not have a chance. So now that I have a breather from the minimum wage issue—for a couple of minutes—I can get around to other important news out there for employers.

The deal worked on by Gov. Gibbons in Nevada is meant to protect the benefits of current, retired and even future employers of the state of Nevada, as well as keep the state’s bond rating sturdy. The state’s bond rating is important, by the way, because if it drops, that means it would cost more for the state to borrow money, because in essence the state would become a worse risk to loan money out to.

Gov. Gibbons actually mentioned his intentions to do this plan with the employee benefits system in his state of the union address back in January, if any of you Nevada employers were following it then. But now Gov. Gibbons has gotten around to it—he proposes to give pay raises to state employees in a two part process. First, they will get a 2 percent increase in the next coming fiscal year according to his plan. Then the following year, state employees will get a 4 percent pay raise.

Breaking the pay raise into a two year deal will actually serve the purpose of saving the state as much as $31 million. That money will then be used to fund a trust fund for these employee benefits. This investment is basically necessary in order to keep the benefits system for public employees in the state operational and sound fiscally.