Jobs top priority for Nevada lawmakers, Majority Leader Steven Horsford says

BY RAY HAGAR

rhagar@rgj.com

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, laid out his battle plan Monday for the first 30 days of the 2011 Legislature during his opening remarks to the senate.

Horsford’s focus in the first month of the session will be on job creation, although he said he remains opposed to the cuts to education proposed by Gov. Brian Sandoval.

“The first goal 2011 Legislature should be job creation,” Horsford said, proposing his Creating Nevada Jobs Initiative.

Although he was vague on details, he wants lawmakers to get right to work on it. “I call on this Legislature to make the Creating Nevada Jobs Initiative a top priority within the first 30 days of this session,” Horsford told the senate. “And the governor should sign it so we can quickly put as many as 5,000 Nevadans back to work. It can be done.” Horsford said specifics of the initiative will be released soon.

“We will be rolling that out over the next week,” Horsford said. “It will be our first major initiative and we are going to work with the governor and work with anyone else, regardless of party, who agrees that we have to get Nevadans back to work.”

Most of the new jobs would come in the construction industry, Horsford said.

Construction has been impacted severely by the recession. Reno has lost 2,700 construction jobs -- 26 percent of its work force -- between November 2009 and November 2010, according to local builders’ statistics.

 

Statewide construction employment dipped below 60,000 jobs in November 2010 for the first time since February 1995.

 

Horsford said his initiative will incorporate many of the ideas for job creation that have been proposed by the Vision Stakeholders Group, Nevada 2.0, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki’s economic development task force and the Nevada Job Coalition.

“We have been working or months with a number of groups,” Horsford said. “There are a number of recommendations. 

“Some of then overlap but all of them are focused on the same thing: What can we do in this Legislature in the short term to help put Nevadans back to work. Our big focus in the first 30 days is going to be on jobs.”

Some Republicans agreed with Horsford’s priority on job creation.

“I think jobs are really important,” said Sen. Joe Hardy, R-Boulder City. “With everything I do, I’m looking through my jobs glasses. So everything we do has to be saying. ‘How does this affect our economy in Nevada?’ and ‘How do we get this economy back? The economy has to get back one person at a time, one job at a time and one construction worker at a time.”

Horsford did not identify a funding source for his initiative but cited the success of a similar program created last year.

“We passed a blueprint during the February 2010 special session showing how the Legislature can spark private sector job creation,” Horsford said. “SB5, of the 26th special session, is successfully funding some 20 projects, providing 2,500 private sector jobs in the hardest-hit industry in this recession, construction.”

Horsford’s plan, on the surface, sounds similar to one put forth the Building Jobs Coalition of Nevada, which wants to create 100,000 construction jobs with the help of new tax money from sources such as gasoline taxes and green-energy surcharges.

 

The coalition plans a rally Wednesday in Carson City to publicize its plan.

Adam Ashbridge, 27, laid off from his framing job two months ago, said at a Building Jobs Coalition of Nevada rally last month that he has been stunned by the swiftness of the recession’s hammer on the construction sector over the past two years.

“We’ve got families. A lot of people are losing their houses. We’ve got to eat, too,” he said. “For young guys like me, to see it all decline so quickly ... I went from working 60 hours a week to not even working now. We’ve lost our livelihood.”

Job creation was a big election issue for Sandoval, who opposes tax hikes to accomplish the goal. Sandoval seeks job growth through private sector growth, his press secretary Mary-Sarah Kinner said recently.