Purple Politics Nevada is KUNR’s weekly show about the 2023 Nevada Legislative Session. In this week’s episode, host Lucia Starbuck spoke with Nevada Democratic Treasurer Zach Conine about his proposed legislation to create trust funds for babies covered under Medicaid, a loan repayment program for health care workers, and funding for rural schools and workforce housing.
Click here for a transcript of the audio story.
Episode Overview
The Nevada treasurer is looking to make several million-dollar investments through bills proposed on his behalf during the 2023 legislative session.
Assembly Bill 28 would create a trust fund for babies born insured by Medicaid. The program proposes to invest $3,200 per baby, which could grow to around $12,000 by the time they turn 18, Conine estimates. The money could be used for higher education, starting a business or purchasing a home. Roughly 44% of births in Nevada were paid for by Medicaid in 2020.
“We realized we had some generational poverty issues to try and tackle. We wanted to look at individuals whose births are paid for by Medicaid” Conine said. “We know that that individual is likely to remain in poverty for a lot of their life unless they get some help.”
Conine is also looking to increase the number of health care workers in the state. Assembly Bill 45 would establish a loan repayment program for providers, including dentists, optometrists and psychologists who work in underserved communities for five years. Health care workers will not be required to pay the state back and can receive up to $120,000.
“This program came out of the ‘Nevada Recovers Listening Tour,’ ” Conine said. “As we went all around the state, one of the things we heard consistently was, ‘I don’t have access to a doctor in my town.’ ”
In a bipartisan effort, Conine collaborated with Nevada’s Republican governor’s office to make changes to the State Infrastructure Bank. Senate Bill 10 would move the program from the Nevada Department of Transportation’s oversight to the treasurer’s and it would expand the types of projects it can fund to include the construction of rural K-12 school facilities and workforce housing.
“Deeply important as we see some of the larger economic participants moving into the state – Tesla, Redwood – are looking for ways to most effectively house their employees,” Conine said. “On the rural school side, we have schools in some of our rural communities that are absolutely crumbling.”
Listen to this week’s episode of Purple Politics Nevada with Lucia Starbuck to hear what these investments could mean for the state.
As a note of disclosure, the Nevada State Treasurer’s office is a business sponsor of KUNR.
Transcript
(UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC BEGINS)
LUCIA STARBUCK, HOST: Welcome to this week’s episode of Purple Politics Nevada. I’m your host, Lucia Starbuck. The name reflects the fact that Nevada isn’t red or blue — it’s both. Today I’m with Nevada Democratic State Treasurer Zach Conine. We’re talking about legislation to create baby bonds and a loan repayment program, along with funding for rural schools and workforce housing.
(UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC ENDS)
STARBUCK: Treasurer Conine, you’re looking to make investments during the legislative session. Let’s start with trust funds for babies. What’s that about?
ZACH CONINE: One of the things we noticed during the pandemic was that we just have social safety nets all throughout the state that are unable to deal with the volume caused by a crisis. And when we started looking at the root causes of that, we realized we had some generational poverty issues to try and tackle. We wanted to look at individuals whose births are paid for by Medicaid, which is about 44% of Nevadans right now; we know that that individual is likely to remain in poverty for a lot of their life unless they get some help.
We’re creating a program called the baby bonds program that will invest $3,200 in each of those kiddos with the hope that by the time they’re 18, they can use that money for housing, use that money for education, or use that money to start a small business.
STARBUCK: How much will it grow by the time someone turns 18?
CONINE: Well, it depends how we do on the investments game, but we’re pretty good at it, so we think it’d be around $12,000.
STARBUCK: And it’s something that you’ve talked about before. It’ll cost less in social services later on. Will you walk me through how that works?
CONINE: For instance, the state pays about $49 million a month in SNAP benefits. The majority of SNAP recipients at some point in their life have been on Medicaid. And so if we’re able to take someone out of a universe where they need SNAP benefits and WIC benefits and Medicaid benefits, that is a cost to the state that is ongoing.
STARBUCK: A bipartisan bill has brought you and the Republican governor’s office together; it would make some changes to the state infrastructure bank. First, briefly explain what that is.
CONINE: The state infrastructure bank was created in 2017, and the goal there was to provide a mechanic to fund programs and projects that would not be funded otherwise. A lot of times in Nevada, the biannual nature of our legislature puts us in a place where there’s a great idea, but we have no mechanic to actually pay for it. Now, we have energy projects. We have social infrastructure, which includes education, housing – workforce, affordable – etc. We can do inland ports. We can do broadband.
STARBUCK: This bill will expand the types of projects that can be funded. What are those?
CONINE: Puts $50 million more into the bank to focus on two things: rural school construction and workforce housing. Deeply important as we see some of the larger economic participants moving into the state – Tesla, Redwood – are looking for ways to most effectively house their employees. We also know that their presence in the state creates ripple effects in other communities like Sparks and Reno and Washoe, where dollars aren’t coming in from a tax perspective.
On the rural school side, we have schools in some of our rural communities that are absolutely crumbling. And the way that most schools are paid for, from a capital perspective, is the issuance of bonds paid for by property tax within whatever county it is. While there are certainly schools in both Clark and Washoe that need help, they have a mechanic to pay for that. But if you are in White Pine County or you’re in Elko, it can be very difficult to raise the revenue needed from a tax perspective to cover the bond.
STARBUCK: Another bill would create a loan repayment program for health care workers.
CONINE: This program came out of the “Nevada Recovers Listening Tour,” and as we went all around the state, one of the things we heard consistently was, “I don’t have access to a doctor in my town.” For our friends in West Wendover, “I’ve had to drive to Salt Lake City to see a specialist, that means I’m driving there, and that drive is pretty long, so I’m going to stay overnight, and the costs become overwhelming.”
What our program does is provide loan repayment for health care providers that choose to come to Nevada and serve in underserved communities. We’re targeting the amount of loan repayment based on the profession, so different programs obviously have different amount of loan, and we don’t want to overpay or underpay. Over five years, we will repay one-fifth a year of their student loans up to $120,000.
STARBUCK: Do the health care workers have to pay the state back?
CONINE: The health care workers don’t have to pay the state back. And the way that we have gotten to that is we are paying in arrears. So you work here for a year, we’ll pay for one-fifth of your schooling. We’re not paying you in advance. We don’t want to have to chase after health care professionals if career, or love, or a search for a new dog finds them in a different place.
STARBUCK: What kind of professions does this include?
CONINE: We wanted a pretty broad group of medical professionals. So not just doctors, but optometrists, dentists, registered nurses, mental health care professionals and counselors, women’s health care professionals.
STARBUCK: They need to have graduated from a Nevada college or university, right?
CONINE: So our original idea was let’s make sure that Nevadans have a place to go when they don’t feel the need to go somewhere else. But what we know is in the state we don’t have enough graduate medical education; we don’t have enough residency programs. And so we want to try to attract doctors from other states. We might, at some point, if there is too much demand, put a preference for Nevada graduates, again, trying to make sure the individuals we’ve helped all along the way can stay here.
(UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC BEGINS)
STARBUCK: That was Nevada Democratic State Treasurer Zach Conine. As a note of disclosure, the Nevada State Treasurer’s office is a business sponsor of KUNR. I’m Lucia Starbuck, and you’ve been listening to Purple Politics Nevada.
(UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC ENDS)
The theme song, “Vibe Ace” by Kevin MacLeod, is licensed under Creative Commons and was edited for this episode.
