Nevada state Controller Andy Matthews is sponsoring legislation to create a new state office of inspector general. (Legislative committee stream screengrab)
The first week of his second presidency Donald Trump fired inspectors general at 17 different federal agencies, and a few days later he fired another one.
Maybe one of them can get a job in Nevada.
Nevada Republican state Controller Andy Matthews is pushing legislation to create a Nevada inspector general empowered to audit any state agency, local government entity, or nonprofit organization that receives state funding.
There is a Nevada division of Internal Audit Services in the Governor’s Finance Office, a Legislative Counsel Bureau Audit Division, and the Nevada Department of Corrections has an audit division all its own.
But those all conduct performance audits to determine if an organization is efficiently and effectively achieving its goals, Matthews told the state Assembly committee on government affairs Monday. The inspector general called for in Assembly Bill 33 would instead conduct forensic audits to find waste, fraud, abuse, and/or misconduct, Matthews said.
“Anytime is a good time to bring more oversight and accountability to government spending,” said Matthews, whose career prior to being elected to the state Assembly and then state controller included serving as president of the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a libertarian research and advocacy organization.
Under his bill, the controller would select three to five candidates who meet the bill’s job requirements, and present them to a panel that includes the state treasurer, the state controller (again), and the lieutenant governor, who in turn could make the appointment only by unanimous decision.
“I’m not sure why the lieutenant governor makes sense in this part of your bill,” said Assemblymember Duy Nguyen, D-Las Vegas.
Matthews said he wasn’t wedded to that part.
Noting that Matthews said the beauty of the inspector general position is the person would be independent, Nguyen asked why the bill houses the office under the controller instead of setting it up as a stand-alone entity, adding “What happens if the controller needed to be audited?”
Matthews said he wasn’t wedded to the position being in his office, either.
Republican members of the committee praised the legislation, as did representatives of the Nevada Libertarian Party, the Nevada Independent American Party, and Matthews’ former employer, Nevada Policy (formerly Nevada Policy Research Institute).
Also testifying in favor of the bill was Jim DeGraffenreid, who is the national Republican committeeman for Nevada but perhaps best known as one of the six fake electors who still face state charges for fraudulently submitting false electoral certificates to Congress in 2020 wrongly declaring that Trump had won Nevada that year.
Opponents of the legislation speaking Monday included representatives of the Nevada Association of Counties and the Nevada Leagues of Cities, who called the bill “redundant” and “duplicative,” respectively.
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