Daily Archives: May 3, 2021

IF any of the exceedingly hard-pressed staff at Glasgow Airport had time to read the Glasgow Herald on the morning of the airports opening, they would have been cheered.

The papers leading article on Monday, May 2, 1966, argued that the decision to build the airport was the right one. It could even be, in its way, as crucial a decision as many that had found a permanent place in civic history from the dredging of the Clyde to the introduction (and eventually abolition) of the trams, the leader continued.

It demonstrated there there was still a place for the kind of civic enterprise which made made Glasgow renowned in the previous century as one of Europes most progressive cities.

Secondly, it demonstrated the growing dependence of Glasgow, and of Scotland, on air communications. The more air services we have, and the more competitive these services are with each other and with British Railways, the less we are likely to feel like a remote province of Europe, or to be treated as one. It was a fair point.

Upbeat projections were already being made for the airport, which at that time was owned by Glasgow Corporation. In its first year, it was expected to handle 1.2 million passengers and, if that trend continued, some two million by 1970.

Revenues were forecast to rise from 600,000 in 1966/67 to 750,000 in 1970. Landing fees paid by airlines were expected to show a healthy increase. There were great expectations about the airports freight-handling capacity, especially if Britain joined the Common Market. And there was talk of building a 100-bedroom hotel at the airport.

Royal opening

IN fact, when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrived on June 27 for the royal opening of the airport, its director Ronald Read hinted to the duke that expansion might be on the horizon. Already?, the Duke replied, with a laugh.

By that time, 120,000 passengers had arrived at the airport in order to catch a flight. Some 40,000 people had each paid a shilling to get into the sightseers enclosure, and at least another 150,000 had looked around the building. The car-park is three-quarters full most of the time, and the restaurants are packed at both lunchtime and in the evening, the Evening Times reported. Mr Read said that cargo had gone mad, with between 1,200 and 1,500 tons having been carried in the first four weeks.

At that time, 11 regular airlines and six charter services operated from the airport. There were 13 return flights to London every weekday. The airport had been designed to handle medium and short-haul traffic, and there was talk of direct continental flights.

It was also hoped that transatlantic flights could land at Glasgow in the future: the main runway, all 6,720ft of it, could be extended to 10,000ft in order to accommodate those planes.

Transatlantic flights began in June 1967, by which time the airport was already handling 654 different aircraft types, 1.5 million passengers, and in excess of 34,000 aircraft movements.

In September 1972, the airport welcomed the first visit of a wide-bodied jet, a Lockheed Tri-Star, followed the next month by a Laker DC-10.

BAA buyout

A KEY moment in the airports history arrived on Monday, January 7, 1975, when the British Airports Authority (BAA) signed a deal, effective from April 1, to take over ownership of the facility from Glasgow Corporation. Under the deal, BAA paid off a capital debt of more than 6.5 million and undertook to carry out a 10m development programme over the next decade.

The deal also included a 1m goodwill payment to the corporation with reports saying this sum could go towards a new cultural complex for the city, at the junction of Buchanan Street and Sauchiehall Street.

BAA chief executive officer Norman Payne said plans were in hand to extend the domestic arrivals area, with other improvements to follow as demand arose. A new Glasgow-London shuttle service was launched the weekend after the deal was signed.

Other landmarks in the history have included the start, in June 1976, of a 2m extension of the passenger terminal; a visit by Concorde in October 1981; the visit, in June 1983, of a Nasa Boeing 747 with the Space Shuttle Enterprise on top of it; and, in March 1989, the launch of the biggest development of the airport yet a three-year, 55m expansion of the terminal.

In July 2006, BAA was taken over for 10.1 billion by a consortium led by Ferrovial. Later, it became known as Heathrow Airport Holdings.

New heights

THE airport enjoyed steady growth for several years, culminating in a record year in 2017 of 9.9 million passengers a 5.8% per cent increase on the previous year. Before the advent of the Covid-induced shutdown, the airport was handing around nine million passengers, the main reasons for the drop being Ryanairs decision to close its base in 2018, and the collapses of Thomas Cook and then Flybe.

A spokesman said the airport had remained open during the pandemic to support critical functions, ranging from the air ambulance service that is based there, to military, freight and PPE delivery flights. Other functions include Highlands and Islands routes and critical domestic flights for key workers, and repatriating passengers.

During the pandemic, he added, the airport has gone from hundreds of flights per day to a handful, though the picture is slightly more optimistic now that UK travel restrictions have lifted, which has resulted in an increase in domestic flights.

The economic turbulence of the last year, however, has meant that one-third of the 6,000 jobs at the 100-plus companies that work across the airport have been lost.

In addition to international international commercial air transport and general aviation, the airport has catered for two flying clubs and the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde Air Squadron, the latter still there.

The airport is today owned by AGS Airports Ltd, which is jointly held by Ferrovial and AGS Ventures Airports.

The anonymous author of that enthusiastic Herald article of 55 years ago would have been encouraged by what the airport has achieved in the decades since.

Continue reading here:

Wings over Scotland: The steady growth of Glasgow Airport since the mid-sixties - HeraldScotland

Conversations about mental health have sprung up within the Rochester community, inspired by cruel incidences such as the murder of Daniel Prude. Similarly, the UR community has been significantly impacted by recent events surrounding mental health.

There are many resources for UR students, both remote and on-campus, although most have been entirely online due to the pandemic. Resources that support students who are struggling include the University Counseling Center (UCC), the UR CARE Network, UR Connected, the Health Promotion Office, and many more. Because of the critical nature of the pandemic and social justice issues that have occurred throughout the year, students have felt it important to review mental health advocacy for the Spring 2021 semester, and how it will continue for the upcoming in-person Fall 2021 semester.

UR Connected coach and first-year Karenrose Kamala shared her thoughts on how the surrounding community impacts the institutions approach to mental health: UR tends to forget that theyre part of the Rochester community as a whole, and theres definitely a responsibility to play their part, especially when peoples health is on the line. As for improvements, I think UR just needs to be more cognizant of their impact, and they also need to more actively listen to students.

CARE Network Associate Director Kaitlin Legg told the Campus Times in an interview that as a part of their service, the CARE Network works with students to better understand what resources work for the [students] situation. If a student doesnt feel comfortable with an institutional resource, UCC or the CARE Network can direct them towards off-campus resources.

Senior Antoinette Nguyen, a core leader of the UR Abolition Coalition (URAC), agreed that students may feel uncomfortable with institutional resources because they are made by people of higher power, which makes students worry: Is that really a safe space?

Likewise, it can be a challenge to analyze how students have grown through mental health programs without direct feedback.

Associate Director for University Health Promotion Amy McDonald recognized the difficulty of evaluating the success of these programs. Despite the challenge, she says that UHS creates measurable objectives ahead of time, and then has an evaluation afterwards and is able to track if we met those objectives.

According to Nguyen, race also plays a role in making mental health advocacy on campus more difficult. Mental health is a very white concept in everybodys head, she said. Some are allowed to have mental health problems, and some are not, because of all these other structures that exist.

Especially as an Asian person, my family has so many taboos around therapy and mental health resources. Theyre refugees, so theyre like, Theres bigger problems, and I think thats a very pervasive thought in a lot of communities of color and ethnically non-white communities. So deconstructing that is something that I want to dedicate my life to, Nguyen continued.

There are diverse on-campus spaces for students of color, first-generation/low-income students, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities. These spaces include the Kearns Center, the Womanist Club, and the Black Student Union, but Nguyen wishes that those spaces had more funding from the University.

Similarly, Kamala said that its the student coaches that makes UR Connected more approachable. Sometimes you just need someone who can kind of relate more closely. I know a lot of the feedback we get, people mention that talking to coaches can feel like talking to a friend.

Still, students like Nguyen have concerns for how the University is supporting student mental health advocates.

We are creating space. We are carving out space to heal for specific racialized events, which I think is really good, Nguyen said. I just wish that the University gave more support, instead of always having it all on the students.

More here:

A review of the spring semester's mental health advocacy - Campus Times

The checkered flag is poised to start waving as state lawmakers enter the final month of the legislative session with a host of major policy and budget issues still unresolved, from repeal of the death penalty to raising taxes on the mining industry, wholesale changes to the K-12 funding formula and many other big-ticket items.

Tuesdays meeting of the Economic Forum the panel of five economists who forecast expected state tax revenue is generally viewed as the green light for a host of budgetary issues and major bills to move to the finish line before the clock strikes midnight on sine die, May 31.

Most indicators are that the improving economy, coupled with rising COVID vaccination rates, will boost state tax revenues above what the Forum forecasted in December about $8.5 billion over the next two fiscal years, or about $500 million less than the last two-year budget cycle.

Legislators have nonetheless proceeded based on the less-rosy budgetary picture, making tough cuts to education and health care programs that at times drew heated debate. While a recovering economy is expected to help alleviate some of those previously identified cuts, lawmakers say theyre still waiting on the bigger piece of the puzzle U.S. Treasury guidance on how the state can spend the roughly $2.9 billion allocated through the recently passed federal American Recovery Act.

But without guidance soon, legislators say it's almost a guarantee that a summer special session will be needed to make a decision on how to dole out the one-time federal windfall.

Every day from this day forward, we're running out of time, Senate Finance Committee Chair Chris Brooks said. (If) that happens at a certain point ... the only way we can do it is to close the budget, and then fill it back in at a later date, just because we'll run out of time.

Gov. Steve Sisolaks Chief of Staff Michelle White echoed those comments, saying that the governors office didnt want to recommend allocating general fund dollars to needs that may later be met by an influx of federal funds even on topics that might attract bipartisan support, such as funding a replacement unemployment insurance system, a broad expansion of preschool and more. Beyond the flexible $2.9 billion, other pots of federal funding with more specific earmarks are also expected.

The governor wants to make sure that that's a process that can go through the appropriate budgetary process, and with the Legislature having full input, she said. We hope that's the case.

Outside of the budget, legislators are beginning their typical ritual of rolling out ambitious bills in the waning days of the session, including a state-based public health insurance option, fixes to the oft-criticized unemployment insurance system, and a major transmission and electric vehicle omnibus bill. Theyre also making progress on behind-the-scenes negotiations, including on a much-publicized effort to raise mining taxes and implementing a wholesale change to the decades-old K-12 funding formula.

But hopes in early May can often turn to tears by June, with many landmines and potential pitfalls awaiting lawmakers and major pending legislation. Heres a look at the state of play for some of the biggest proposals on tap for the last month of the session.

Mining taxes

The question of a potential mining tax hike has simmered in the background through the first three months of session. Theres been little public movement from lawmakers, but three proposed constitutional amendments raising the industrys constitutional rate cap are playing the role of Chekovs gun.

Though progressive advocates are clamoring for lawmakers to move forward on AJR1 striking what they call the mining industrys sweetheart deal in the Constitution and imposing a 7.75 percent tax on the gross proceeds of mining companies discussions are ongoing about a potential deal that would lead to lawmakers dropping the proposed amendments in favor of a more immediate tax change.

Democratic legislators appear wary of sending a mining tax resolution to the 2022 midterm ballot and stirring up rural angst at a time when Gov. Steve Sisolak and other high-profile Democrats are up for re-election. The mining industry may also be wary of a ballot measure voters in 2014 narrowly defeated a ballot question removing the language in the Constitution capping mining taxation, but that victory for the industry came during a midterm election that favored Republicans and had particularly low turnout (though many expect the 2022 midterms to be difficult for Democrats as well, given that the party controlling the White House historically does poorly in midterm elections).

I said even last special session that if we can find common ground and some compromise that would avoid us having an expensive exercise on the ballot, that we will certainly be open to that, and we still are, Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson (D-Las Vegas) said on Monday.

Negotiations are still fluid meaning things could easily collapse between now and the end of session. But lawmakers, including Senate Finance Chair Chris Brooks (D-Las Vegas), say that some sort of immediate mining tax increase may be the best and only option to raise revenue this session.

I would prefer to see a collaborative approach between the industry and the Legislature to come up with a change in the current [taxation] structure that they have, he said. That would be a sustainable way to put money into our budgets in the short term, and not many years from now. I'm supportive of that approach.

But any struck deal will lead to a math problem lawmakers need at least a handful of Republican votes in the Assembly and Senate to clear the needed two-thirds threshold for a tax increase.

One of Republicans most prominent concerns when the proposed constitutional amendments emerged over the summer was that the mining industry was surprised by them; this time around, the industry is at the table for discussions. Republican leaders in both chambers have not completely closed the door on a tax increase, but said they want more input in the process and would want any revenue hike be narrowly tailored and go to specific programs or functions amenable to both parties.

I think that all tax bills should have been discussed from the get-go, Senate Minority Leader James Settelmeyer (R-Minden) said in an interview. I don't think it's proper to bring anything with 30 days left and say, Oh, here you go. We made the deal, and now we want you to vote for it. Why not have a discussion with us?

State-based public option

One of the most heavily lobbied issues over the last month of the session will be the effort to implement a state public health insurance option requiring insurers that bid to provide coverage to the states Medicaid population to also apply to offer a state-backed public option plan.

SB420 was introduced in the Senate on Wednesday and sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) and has already been scheduled for a hearing Tuesday.

The legislation dubbed CannizzaroCare comes from public option efforts in past sessions, including a 2017 effort to allow Nevadans to buy into the states Medicaid program, (which the Legislature approved but that was vetoed by Gov. Brian Sandoval), and a 2019 study lawmakers approved to look into the possibility of allowing Nevadans to buy into the states Public Employee Benefits Program (PEBP) health plan.

The legislation is backed by a cadre of public health groups (including health districts in Washoe and Clark counties) and progressive organizations, but has attracted an organized opposition effort from doctors, hospitals and health insurance panning the legislation as an unaffordable new government-controlled health insurance system.

Death with dignity

The latest in a long line of efforts to legalize a process allowing terminally ill patients to self-administer life-ending medication prescribed by a physician hasnt made much movement since it was referred without recommendation out of committee by the first committee deadline in early April.

The bill, AB351, was referred to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee shortly after, where its sat ever since. But bill sponsor Edgar Flores (D-Las Vegas) said he was confident about the bills chances adding that he expected it to come up for a hearing and likely vote at some point once the budget committee finishes processing more straightforward agency bills.

Eventually we'll have an opportunity to have a hearing there, and then hopefully get it to the floor, he said. And I'm confident that that's where it's at now. Obviously, things may change, but I think that's where we're at now.

Flores said he had also spoken with the states Department of Health and Human Services, and believed the agency would take its fiscal note (estimated cost to implement) off the bill.

The concept has divided lawmakers, and not always along strict party lines. Assembly Minority Leader Robin Titus (R-Wellington) said she had struggled with the bill; her libertarian side supported giving patients those rights, but thought that many of the concepts including limiting a coroners investigation and timelines in the bill were improper.

I have real issues with those things, apart from my struggle with does a person have a right to decide how they end their life, she said.

Death penalty

Members of the Assembly recently voted along party lines to abolish the death penalty, pushing the proposal as far as its ever been in Nevada after fits and starts in recent sessions. But the bill hasnt been touched in the Senate, where both the committee chair responsible for processing it and the Senate majority leader are prosecutors whose boss Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson has been vocal in favor of keeping capital punishment.

Gov. Steve Sisolak has at times expressed unqualified opposition to the death penalty, and on other occasions said he would support it for extreme cases, such as the Oct. 1 mass shooting.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Melanie Scheible has said that the bill could move forward if the sponsor can come with an amendment that is acceptable to the governor, but bill presenter Assemblyman Steve Yeager while acknowledging he wants to make progress says hes not sure whether he and abolition supporters would accept a watered down version of the bill.

Others, including leaders of the Nevada State Democratic Party, say the onus is on senators to at least give the bill the courtesy of a hearing. In a video not widely circulated before this week, Scheible affirmed unequivocally at the Battle Born Progress Progressive Summit in January that she supported the quest to end the death penalty.

DETR bill

Republicans have latched on to one of the most prominent failings of the executive branch massive backlogs in an inundated unemployment claims system as one of their top priorities this session. Lawmakers of both parties often mention the emails they have received from claimants desperate for stalled benefits.

Senate Republicans have met with claimants in the glitchy Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and hinted for weeks that they would introduce legislation to address issues identified in a lawsuit brought by PUA claimants, such as the lack of communication between a regular unemployment and PUA computer system. They also have been publicly critical that the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation loan policy bill, SB75, makes technical changes to the regular unemployment program but does not speak to some of claimants marquee complaints.

Though Republicans bill, SB419, dropped last week, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chris Brooks described it as a stunt and likely dead on arrival because it proposes spending $40 million from the strained general fund on a multi-year modernization project.

Brooks said the ambitious project should wait until the latest round of federal funding comes through. Democrats have listed a modernization project as a top priority in a framework on how to spend the money, and say they expect the federal guidance will allow such a use.

White said Democrats are in agreement with recommendations made by a governor-appointed unemployment strike force led by former Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley.

We have to make sure that anything that we've identified last year that could be better, that we're making all efforts to change now that funding will be available, pending eligibility, White said.

DETR officials have said it could take up to a year to design a request for proposals laying out exactly what the state wants out of the IT overhaul. In the meantime, the governors budget proposes a modest $1 million over the biennium for contractors to help resolve close to 2,000 technical issues of various sizes within the benefits system.

Education

Release of the long-awaited report from the statutorily-created Commission on School Funding last week laid bare what many lawmakers and public education advocates have long suspected moving Nevada to the national average in per-pupil school funding will cost more than $2 billion over a decade and hundreds of million of dollars in additional revenue every year.

The report recommended that lawmakers implement major changes to the current sales and property tax systems, but those general proposals have largely fallen flat. On property tax changes, Brooks said he absolutely agrees changes are needed but I don't think now's the time to do it as the state continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Frierson in a previous statement panned the sales tax as regressive but signaled support for restructuring the mining tax and bringing in revenue from short-term rental companies such as Airbnb.

"With regards to other revenue structures, many take time and robust stakeholder outreach and that has not been something we have had during this session," Frierson said.

Still, lawmakers are moving forward with plans to accelerate a shift to the new Pupil-Centered Funding Formula, an update to the dated past funding formula initially approved by legislators in 2019. Many of those budget details, including promises to implement various hold harmless protections to avoid massive overnight funding losses for rural school districts, are still in the works.

Some Republicans have expressed openness to increase funding for education if it has direct ties to student outcomes and is allocated in a transparent manner; they fear that it could otherwise be swept up into collective bargaining agreements. They also have bristled at the shift toward the new funding formula, which has reshuffled the deck on some of their partys most significant legislative accomplishments a series of categorical programs targeted toward specific student groups with special needs that flourished under unified Republican control of the governors office and Legislature in 2015.

Settelmeyer cautioned that Republicans would only be likely to support tax increases directly tied to targeted education spending (the so-called categoricals, which include programs such as Read by Grade 3, and Zoom and Victory schools). He said the odds of starting a discussion on a bipartisan way of how to get there didnt bode well at this late stage in the session.

That's nothing new. Education has always wanted more money, he said. Republicans have shown consistently, if it goes to a purpose, we'll have a discussion. You want it to just go to the same system? I think we tend to be a little bit less likely to agree.

Cannabis

A bill to authorize cannabis consumption lounges seeks to resolve a longstanding conundrum in the state that using cannabis is legal, but consuming it anywhere outside a private home is illegal. It stands at odds with an assumption that drove much investment in the Nevada marijuana industry that tourist consumption would make the Silver States cannabis industry punch above its weight.

The measure, AB341, is described even by the director of the Cannabis Compliance Board as the most promising vehicle for diversifying an industry with upper ranks that skew white and male. Social equity elements of the bill would give a competitive advantage to lounge operators who have been adversely affected by the War on Drugs, bringing new players into an industry characterized by extremely high barriers to entry and fierce competition for a limited number of licenses.

A similar consumption lounge concept failed late in the 2019 session, but that was before the Cannabis Compliance Board had formally assumed regulatory oversight of the industry. Proponents are optimistic that with a focused regulatory body in place, the state is now ready to take a step toward lounges.

The bill has been parked in the Ways and Means Committee because of the estimated $3 million the Cannabis Compliance Board would have to spend to support the projected 30 new positions needed to regulate scores of consumption lounges. Marijuana regulation is generally self-supported by licensing fees, although the board has not yet estimated how much revenue the lounges would bring in to balance out the ledger.

I'm hopeful it's gonna move, said Assemblyman Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas), the bills sponsor, adding that it would likely be one of the last things finished in the session. I just think it's gonna sit there for a while, because we have to close sort of everything else before we can really have a discussion about what might be available to satisfy that fiscal note.

Another potential wrench in the wheels is that the bill requires a two-thirds majority vote, which means its possible Republican-raised concerns about people driving after consuming marijuana could sideline the bill.

Asked about the possible reemergence of a policy allowing coveted dispensary licenses for applicants who did not win them in a contentious 2018 licensing round, Gilles said the governors office is not committing to any policies on that front, citing many moving parts, including ongoing litigation.

I will be happy to engage in any conversations with folks if there's a proposal that's worth ... being worked through the Legislature that's going to resolve everybody's issues and everybody's concerns, he said. I don't know that that's possible.

Energy policy

One of the biggest remaining policy-focused bills yet to drop is Sen. Chris Brooks forthcoming major energy policy bill, which is expected to be introduced sometime this week.

Brooks has described the provisions of the bill in past interviews it will require a $100 million investment by NV Energy to facilitate greatly expanded electric vehicle charging infrastructure, while doubling down on transmission infrastructure aimed at finishing NV Energys proposed Greenlink transmission project, which utility regulators partially approved in March.

On Friday, Brooks said that those portions and others previously described including adoption of tenant solar, allowing utility-scale battery storage projects to access renewable energy tax abatement programs, and moving the state to a larger wholesale electric market would all be included in the legislation.

Brooks reiterated that there were no surprises in the forthcoming bill, and he said the goal was to start the state on major transmission projects as soon as possible saying that while the Public Utilities Commission made the right choice in the most recent transmission case, lawmakers needed to sign off on any major policy push toward greater transmission infrastructure.

Its not the PUCs job to encourage economic development in the state of Nevada, it's the PUCs job to keep the lights on, he said. And so the argument that we need transmission, so that we can become a regional hub for transmission in the West, and so that we can attract economic activity to our state, is not necessarily the regulator's job... it's the policymakers and legislators jobs and the governor's job to give that message.

Housing and rental assistance

Gov. Steve Sisolak has said that the state extension of the eviction moratorium, which runs through May at the state level but is backed up by a federal moratorium that lasts through June, will be the final one. But lawmakers are working on a bill that creates a glide path from the eviction ban into normalcy, and ushers out the hundreds of millions of dollars the state has received in rental assistance but has struggled to get out to people quickly.

As we're coming up to the end of the moratorium, we need to figure out a way to even further ... perfect the way in which we get those dollars into the hands of landlords, said Scott Gilles of the governors office.

Gilles said the governors office doesnt think they can get around a federal government restriction that prevents payments directly to a landlord with no tenant involvement but the legislation aims to ensure that a tenant who wants to engage and take advantage of the rental assistance dollars will ultimately have that opportunity.

Assemblyman Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) said discussions include how we can slow the eviction process enough so that the monies that are there get used and whether there are other pots of less-restricted money that could help tenants who dont qualify under newer, stricter federal rules setting income limits or landlords who are having trouble securing the required tenant cooperation.

Its still unclear whether the bill would have provisions that prevent landlords from immediately evicting a tenant after receiving overdue back rent through the assistance program.

We're looking at whatever options are there to keep people in their homes and if there's some enticement for a landlord to be paid these dollars or ... have some sort of agreement going forward through the mediation program, Gilles said. Obviously that's the intended result.

State worker collective bargaining

Another potential hurdle in the rush to finish the session will come in the novel process of approving collective bargaining agreements for state workers the first-ever undertaking since lawmakers expanded bargaining rights to state employees in 2019.

In theory, the bargaining units (representing a swath of state workers) are supposed to come to a tentative agreement with the states Department of Administration, go for approval to the states Board of Examiners (composed of the governor and other statewide elected officials), and is then transmitted to the Legislature as a budget amendment, prior to the end of session.

However, a spokeswoman for the Department of Administration said Friday that only one agreement (with the Nevada State Law Enforcement Officers Association) out of the seven recognized bargaining units is ready to go before the Board of Examiners.

The agency said it does not currently have a timeline for bringing forward agreements with bargaining units represented by AFSCME (which represents four) and is still negotiating tentative agreements with two other units the Battle Born Fire Fighters Association and Nevada Police Union.

The 2019 legislation authorizing state workers to collectively bargain also contains provisions giving the governor the final say on wages or other monetary compensation despite any approved collective bargaining agreement.

White said that the main focus right now was timing, and getting budget amendments over to lawmakers with enough time to spare before the end of session.

Anyone could look at it right now with 30 days left and say that's a tight timeline, and it is a tight timeline but, we feel confident in our partnership throughout this process to negotiate in good faith and get everything done that we can possibly get done in these negotiations and agreements, she said.

Right to Return

A bill presented by Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) that guarantees hospitality workers the right to return to the job they lost during the pandemic has not advanced since it had a public hearing in early April. But the measure, SB386, has a waiver that exempts it from legislative deadlines, and parties have been negotiating to address stark disagreements between union and business interests.

Our whole goal is making sure people can get back on the job and so it's something we're monitoring. I think there are some real, real challenges that people are trying to work through. And that's kind of the last update I've had on it, White said on Saturday. So I think we'll see. I think it's something that folks want to find a resolution on.

See the original post:

There's one month left in the session. Here's where the Legislature is on taxes, the death penalty and more. - The Nevada Independent

Cronyism and outsourcing have defined the governments response to the pandemic, from the VIP lane for personal protective equipment (PPE) suppliers with connections to the Tory party to the privatised track and trace system so flawed it was described by Sage as only being of marginal impact. But less attention has been paid to what the longer-term impact of these decisions might be. Far from being an aberration, the governments pandemic response reflects its commitment to embedding private interests at the heart of the state and stealthily chipping away at our most valued national institution.

As Sir David King, a former chief scientific adviser, and the special representative for climate change under Boris Johnson when he was foreign secretary, recently told the Guardian, the government is slipping through plans to effectively privatise the NHS by stealth in the name of a pandemic. This story of privatisation is not one of wholesale transfer, such as the sell-off of British Gas or Royal Mail, but rather of a gradual hollowing out, a process that has been further accelerated by the pandemic and will continue under the Johnson government. In 2010, for example, the NHS spent 4.1bn on private sector contracts; by 2019, this had more than doubled to 9.2bn.

Already, the governments pandemic response is shaping the future structures of the NHS, public procurement and public scrutiny. Look at PPE procurement, which has functioned recently as a giant slush fund for Tory donors. Matt Hancocks pub landlord, Alex Bourne, and a former adviser to Priti Patel, Samir Jassal, are just two beneficiaries of what the charity Transparency International has called systemic biases in the award of PPE contracts favouring those with political connections to the party of government. The charity says these red flags require more, not less, scrutiny. But less scrutiny is precisely what the government has been engineering.

Ministers are still refusing to publish the full list of companies that were placed in the VIP lane after being endorsed by politicians or senior civil servants. The register of ministers financial interests, which should be published every six months, was last updated nine months ago. Basic avenues of accountability and transparency are consistently being closed down or obstructed; journalists have found freedom of information (FoI) requests delayed or blocked by the clearing house unit set up in the Cabinet Office to screen requests, while leaked emails show the Cabinet Office is collating lists of journalists with details about their work, and intervening when sensitive subjects are inquired about. (The unit has been condemned as Orwellian by the former Conservative cabinet minister David Davis.)

Meanwhile, the role of overseeing the ministerial code was left vacant for five months after Sir Alex Allan resigned when Johnson opted not to sack Patel for breaching the code last November. His replacement, Christopher Geidt, will still not be able to initiate investigations into impropriety without the prime ministers approval.

These instances reflect a dilution of oversight that bodes ill for the future. Scaling back scrutiny and accountability are vital ways of providing cover for further NHS privatisation, a policy ministers know to be politically unpopular. Another way of doing this is through the creation of new bodies, spearheaded by figures who are compliant with and sensitive to this governments agenda. Hancock has already replaced Public Health England (PHE) with the National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP), which will continue to sit outside the NHS (the consulting firm McKinsey was paid 560,000 for five weeks work drawing up plans for the new body). The NIHP will be led by Dido Harding, who sits in the House of Lords as a Tory peer, an appointment that Lord Falconer termed a corruption of our constitution.

The creation of the NIHP was sold as bringing together expertise. But politically the government has used the cover of a pandemic to subsume public health experts under track and trace management. Vital areas of public health are now being handed over to an appointee who thought the most appropriate way of dealing with the pandemic was to outsource contracts to private sector providers such as Serco, Sitel and Deloitte, rather than harness the capacity of local public health teams. Understandably, the creation of the NIHP and abolition of PHE has upset dedicated public professionals across the health service.

Another policy decision that may strengthen the cronyist approach adopted during the pandemic is the health and social care white paper, which was published in February this year and spun as a set of policies that would unravel Andrew Lansleys 2012 Health and Social Care Act. The white paper sets out how integrated care systems (ICS) will be rolled out, combining NHS trusts with GP services as commissioners from a single budget pot. These ICS bodies will no longer be required to put contracts out to tender, but can instead award them directly creating opportunities for contracts to be awarded to politically connected firms.

The campaigning thinktank We Own It is concerned that these plans would embed the role of the private sector within the health service, but with less transparency and accountability over contracts. Indeed, GP services are an area where the private sector is taking an increasing interest, with US health giants such as Centene Corporation buying up GP services through its UK arm Operose Health. Campaigners are worried these ICS bodies will be unaccountable and profit-making, and that private providers could sit on their commissioning boards (its not yet clear whether ICS board meetings will be public and subject to FoI requests).

Its not just GP services that are an area of concern. In August last year, the government announced a four-year plan to spent 10bn of taxpayers money on private hospitals in order to clear NHS waiting lists. This has been justified as an emergency measure to deal with a backlog, but the question remains why this money was used to fund private providers rather than NHS capacity. The health campaigner John Lister says the institutionalised use of private hospitals will likely leave the NHS weakened and could lead to long-term expansion of the private sector for elective care.

This points to the crux of the issue. Though ministers have sought to justify their decisions with reference to the exceptional circumstances of Covid-19, many of these decisions instead seem part of a longer-term plan to embed political appointees and private providers at the heart of the state. Rather than selling off the NHS outright a decision politicians know would be unpopular they are instead doing this through the backdoor, by stealth. Its up to everyone who cares about the future of the NHS to make some noise about it.

Link:

The NHS is being privatised by stealth under the cover of a pandemic - The Guardian

The Portland Police Department said it has been in contact withthe FBI overa menacing video that includeda masked individual with an altered voice issuing a threat against the city's mayorTed Wheeler.

The Oregonian reported that the two-minute video appeared on Twitter earlier this week and the individual claims to be part of the citys anti-fascist community.

"Blood is already on your hands, Ted," the person said. "The next time, it may just be your own."

The paper reported that the video emerged shortly after Wheeler signaled that he would take a tougher stance against thosewho want todestroyparts of the city in the name of protest.He vowed to "unmask" those who take up arson or vandalism and said it was time to "hurt them a little bit," according to the New York Times.

He asked the public to come forward with any information on members of the anarchist group.

"The city is beginning to recover, but self-described anarchists who engage in regular criminal destruction dont want things to open up, to recover," Wheeler said. "They want to prevent us from doing the work of making a better Portland for everyone. They want to burn, they want to bash."

The Oregonian reported that the individual in the video vowed that the unrest would continue in the city until Wheeler steps down.

GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"We are not just challenging the idea of having Ted as a mayor. We are challenging the idea of having mayors at all. We want abolition. Abolition is absolute," the individual in the video said, according to the Post Millennial.

Fox News' Thomas Barrabi contributed to this report

Read more from the original source:

Portland cops, FBI investigate video of masked anarchist who issued threat to Wheeler: report - Fox News