Industry FocusState Leadership

 

Nevada is in a unique position. While the Silver State has always boasted a business-friendly environment, tourism serves as the backbone of its economy. But, with recent reports of significant declines in Nevada’s tourism industry, which contributes significantly to the state’s coffers, state leaders are working harder than ever to diversify Nevada’s economy. This past year state leaders have made significant strides in setting the stage to expand Nevada’s workforce by attracting new businesses, creating opportunities for business owners and updating internal systems that were long overdue.

Recently, some of Nevada’s state leaders met at a roundtable sponsored by Nevada State Bank to discuss the challenges Nevada faces. Connie Brennan, publisher and CEO of Nevada Business Magazine, served as moderator for the event. These monthly roundtables bring together different industries to discuss issues and solutions.

What Does Nevada Do to Help Its Workforce?

Chris Sewell: Workforce is the biggest challenge this state is facing. It impacts everybody and it impacts everything. We have hospitality in Las Vegas, and that is the number one workforce. But we are trying to expand our industry here. We do that by making sure we have the workforce. What a lot of people do not realize is our workforce division not only helps people looking for a job, but it helps businesses.

Tom Burns: We have a program that is going to be starting here in southern Nevada to help Haas Automation. It will bring approximately 2,000 jobs to southern Nevada that will require specialized skills.

Sewell: We offer any upskill training that a business wants. If a business comes in and tells us they have someone that is great at something and they want to get him or her into a supervisor or management program, we are willing to help pay for the classes for that.

Mary Devine: We have a small program that has been around a while, and it helps employers understand what a veteran brings to their workforce. Because there are employers out there that do not want to hire a veteran because of PTSD or whatever movie they have watched that week that has influenced their perception of veterans. Those situations are not the case for the majority of veterans.

Sewell: We need the experience and the expertise of the business to create programs. Otherwise, we are just taking a shot in the dark and we could end up putting 500 people through a program and there is no job for them. We do a lot of cross-funding, and we try to raise as much funding as we can to reach more people.

Burns: We encourage the private industry to help us recruit workers. When somebody is successful and has a good experience in Nevada, we ask them to tell their friends and their peers in their industry that this is a good place to come to. Nevada as a whole, from a resource or incentive standpoint, is not as competitive on the tax incentives we offer versus other states that we compete with. Where we do well is with our business environment. And we try to share that with people. But when it comes from people that are actually doing business here, it has a lot more credibility.

George Togliatti: We have been successful in increasing our recruiting efforts for our staff. It will fluctuate depending on the type of candidates we receive and the younger people that are coming up. Some want to be involved in law enforcement. Others gravitate toward parole and probation, where they also can see a difference and turn somebody’s life around. We always have something to offer, and we offer it through the entire state. If you want to live in rural Nevada, you can do it. If you want to come to Vegas, that is great. Things are getting a lot better on that front, but the town is growing so fast. It is a competitive world that we live in with public safety. We are always going to have the challenge of competing with Henderson and Metro, Washoe County and the Reno police departments.

Sewell: When Tesla moved to northern Nevada, they needed a workforce. GOED, DETR and NSHE all worked with Tesla to create the programs they needed so that we could get trained people in their building. That was a partnership created across numerous agencies. Tesla told us what they needed the workforce to be trained in. They helped do some of the actual training, but told us where they needed to start. We all helped fund that and it worked. Those programs are still being utilized and have been expanded today.

Devine: We also integrate with DETR and other offices, to make sure that we can help veterans become employed to the best of their ability. And many times, I hear from the veteran service officers, that they stay in those jobs because it makes a difference.

Sewell: If you can take someone that may be a dishwasher and wants to move up or switch careers, we can help pay for it. We can get them into a business like Alexander Dennis where they are building double-decker busses at the only place in the United States where they are built. We can give them an opportunity to possibly become a lead or a supervisor or a manager. That is a great thing. It really lifts that individual up along with their families and everything else. But we need expertise from businesses.

How Does Public Sector Work Differ From Private Sector?

Burns: I took the job because I firmly believe that if you can give a family a new job, you change the trajectory of that family. In other words, if a person goes from making 16 or 17 dollars an hour in a fairly menial job, and we can get them trained up either through one of our programs or one of our director’s schools programs and get them in a job that makes $42 or $44 an hour, you change the trajectory of that family, and you change the self-esteem of that family. The money matters, but how they feel about themselves matters as much or more. It changes where that family thinks they ought to be and where they ought to go. If you do that one time, you will change a couple of generations of a family. If you can do it 10,000 times, you change the community, and we can all live in a better place.

Devine: Our veteran service officers make a difference every day when they sit down with individual veterans and talk with them about some of the life-altering things that have happened to them. They sit across from veterans and talk about when they were in Iraq or Afghanistan and got blown up by a roadside bomb, or about a military sexual trauma case. And those veteran service officers are helping those veterans work through those issues. They serve not only as counselors, but help veterans collect their medical documentation so they can interface with VA case managers to get their benefits, which are absolutely life-changing things.

Sewell: There are also a lot of things that the state government does, that private enterprises do not. For example, public safety. There really is not a comparable private sector job to that.

What Is the Public Perception of This Industry?

Burns: I came from the private industry, and I was in that part of the world for 38 years. My perception of the quality of people in state government was wrong. I have worked with amazing people. The one-off comments that you hear about government employees are by and large not correct. There are people that are passionate about what they do and the quality of the work that you get out of state employees is pretty exceptional and pretty hard-felt.

Togliatti: The public perception is that government employees are just there for the pension. They put in a 40-hour week and then go home. But there are a lot more that I see in my world, that are extremely passionate about what they do, and that is why they are there. They have a fire in their belly to do the right thing.

Sewell: The average citizen thinks a government employee is a government employee, and we are all grouped into one pot. They think we all make tons of money. But if you look at just the state employees, we are low on the list when compared with Clark County and the City of Las Vegas or the City of Reno and Washoe County.

Andy Matthews: I would say you especially tend to see a disparity when you compare state employee compensation to US and local government compensation.

Togliatti: I left the private sector and took a pay cut. My salary was almost cut in half. I do not get a bonus. But my responsibilities and the pride in what I do are so much higher than when I worked in the private sector.

Zach Conine: I have employees who, in the private sector, were making 10 times what they make working for the state, adjusted for benefits. They generally do that because of public service. All of our jobs (in some way, shape, or form) are encouraging people to work harder than they need to for a lot less money than they could. That is the job of being a leader in state government There are people who have worked in the private sector who do not have to be working where they are now, but are doing it because they want to give back to a state that has given so much to them.

Has Nevada Made Progress in Updating Its Systems?

Conine: There were big steps made in the last year. Certainly, the work done with the implementation of the new DETR unemployment system is an example. That system had not been invested in since the ’90s. Now there is a new system installed that is working really well. The controller’s office also got one of the biggest lifts, moving us from a very old accounting, financial and HR system. But none of these new systems happen super quickly.

Sewell: One of the reasons why we were successful with our new system is we did a lot of work up front. Before it was released, we spent six to eight months confirming what we wanted and making sure that all the nuts and bolts were in place. Then once a vendor was selected, it took almost six months to get the contract written. That contract was over 800 pages. We did everything up front. What also made it successful was the buy-in of the employees. They had to do their day-to-day jobs, but they also needed to help with the system upgrades and there was a lot of great buy-in which is one of the reasons why it was on time and on budget.

Conine: We finally have a group of people in government who are not willing to give the problem to the next person.

Matthews: I am one of three members on the executive steering committee, on what is called the Core Envy Project that is focused on upgrading the state’s very antiquated accounting, HR and IT systems. These systems date back to the 1990s and we have been trying to upgrade them for years. In 2018 we kicked off the first iteration of this attempt to upgrade. Unfortunately, that attempt did not pan out. A lot of money was spent. We had to go back to the drawing board on it with a new vendor and a new project leadership team. It has been a big lift, and we have it heading in the right direction. We have a lot of people from a lot of different agencies that are bringing resources to bear on this.

Conine: We have had some trouble in the past with some systems where upgrades started, we spent a bunch of money, and then it exploded. Then we started again, spent a bunch of money and things exploded again. It feels like now we have some traction.

Matthews: One of the biggest challenges, in addition to the technological side, has been the burnout. There are those who have been working on this project for a number of years who recognize that this was supposed to be done years ago. Their day-to-day job is upset as a result of this because they have been spending time on the project rather than their office. At some point, that fatigue really does set in, and people question if we are actually going to get across the finish line this time. It has been an ongoing problem with the state. I think we have turned an important corner, but there is still work to do on it.

Conine: “Problem” is the right word. I do not think we need a euphemism on that front. This should have been done already. They should have started this process when we were in college. What does feel different about it this time, as opposed to maybe past times, is progress is being made slowly and painfully, with a massive amount of work from your team, from my team and by individuals who are really going above and beyond the paycheck to try to get it done. There is an underlying sense of optimism that it is getting closer to good as opposed to just sort of treading water surrounded by sharks, which is different.

Are There Concerns About Declines in Nevada’s Tourism Industry?

Conine: It is always scary when we start seeing decreases in consumer spending because decreases in consumer spending generally are not temporary and it is such a big piece of how we pay our bills. We are seeing forward bookings in hospitality that are worse than during the pandemic. And during the pandemic, people wanted to come to Nevada, but they could not. They were booking trips for when they thought it would be over and sometimes, they had to move those trips. But now we see people not booking those trips at all.

Matthews: It was perhaps inevitable that in the aftermath of COVID, where we saw a bounce and a surge in tourism, that there was going to be some type of drop off. We will see how enduring this decline is and how severe it ends up being. Right now, it is hard to know, but certainly, it is a concern.

Burns: Historically, we go through cycles and then we come out of them. But they are usually because the economy is allowed to unwind itself and it is not artificially constrained by keeping people out of the country or keeping people from officially coming here and creating other concerns. If that cannot unwind itself at some level, it could have a lumbar effect.

Matthews: It could be a long-term problem. It often is, but it depends on a lot of different factors.

Conine: This recent requirements for visas and the additional fees and bond payments and things that are required for people to come visit Nevada is devastating to an international tourism environment that is already as bad as I have ever seen. Certainly, the worst since I have been treasurer. I have been in gaming since 2003, and I can’t think of a time that it has been as bad as it is. We are putting up barriers to coming to this country, both actual and monetary and it is perceived in a way that is difficult to undo quickly. That is concerning. You add that to general consumer malaise and the difficulty of getting people to spend money, the additional costs of living, the additional costs of housing, the additional costs of health care, et cetera and it does not feel great.

Matthews: And of course, our state’s economy is uniquely susceptible to broader uncertainty in economic conditions. When challenges arise nationally because of how dependent we are on the tourism dollar, it is an outsized approach. There is a reason for real concern.

Conine: We are right at the edge between correction and bigger than correction. From a trajectory perspective, it does not feel like we have bounced the bottom especially in a state where our economy is consumption. Most of the ways we make money are based on consumption. And if people are not consuming and are not spending money for fear of the unknown or actual fear of the known, it is a problem. It makes it harder for George to do his job with public safety. It makes it harder to support veterans. It makes it harder for everything.