Monthly Archives: June 2009

UNR Budget Cut Prompts Reno Newspaper’s Wild Exaggeration

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The Reno Gazette Journal’s headline shouts: “UNR Eliminates 279 Jobs” but of course they are lying. If you read deep within Lenita Powers’ article, you’ll find the truth:

  • UNR paid 37 people extra to retire who wanted to retire anyway (1% of the workforce)
  • UNR didn’t extend the contracts of 37 employees (1.2% of the workforce) for whom there was no obligation to extend the contracts
  • The other 211 “employees”, were either not actually employees (just new people UNR hoped it might be able to hire) or are employees that will remain as employees but will be “paid out of a different account” (6.7% of the workforce)

Prior to these “drastic” cuts, UNR counted 3,145 positions (not all actually filled) according to this spreadsheet:

http://www.unr.edu/vpaf/pba/budget/historical/09state&selfFTE.xls

Faux Draught Foes Drowned Out

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A cynic might say the head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority has engineered a big rise in the water levels of reservoirs upstream from Lake Mead in order to preserve the appearance of extended draught for short-sighted Las Vegans. Her motive would be to create public support for her environmentally- and taxpayer-destructive plan to drain water basins hundreds of miles north of Las Vegas, which would allow her to spend billions of construction dollars and collect political patronage like iron filings to a magnet.

Here’s the story from KLAS channel 8. You decide.