Nevada Business and Industry requests new HR, IT and communications staff to "rightsize" agency

Department of Business and Industry Director Chris Sanchez on Feb. 14 told the Legislature’s joint subcommittee that the agency needs new, permanent staff in human resources, information technology and communications to handle recent growth and modernize operations.

Sanchez said BNI oversees 12 regulatory divisions, 61 boards and commissions and issues about 602,000 licenses and permits annually. The department currently has roughly 773 authorized positions; including board and commission staff, he said the total workforce supported exceeds 1,000. "We are the only one that does not have in-house HR," Sanchez said, explaining the request for a six-person HR unit intended to permit regular performance reviews, succession planning and staff training.

The nut of the presentation was "rightsizing," Sanchez said: moving some functions from decentralized, division-level staffing into a centralized director’s office to gain efficiency and capacity. To that end he proposed an enhanced IT unit in the director’s office, consolidation of siloed IT contractors and four IT positions transferred from divisions into the central unit. Sanchez said the department’s existing IT staff and contracts are fragmented across agencies and that consolidation would speed deployments and reduce duplication.

Sanchez also asked for two additional public information officers and a legal researcher to support the single administrative law judge who currently prepares hearings and decisions alone. "One PIO for an entire agency of our size … doesn't get the job done," Sanchez said, noting the growth in social media and public-facing notifications. He said the legal researcher would act like a paralegal to help prepare opinions and legal research across 12 agencies.

Fiscal and administrative support changes were part of the request: one management analyst, three accounting assistants, and a change to fund the administrative law judge through the department’s cost allocation rather than the consumer affairs general-fund line to reflect the ALJ’s department-wide workload. James Kirkpatrick, administrative services officer, explained multiple decision units would reallocate funding away from prior agency budgets and into the department-wide cost allocation.

Sanchez and deputies said the proposals are intended to reduce executive time spent on operational tasks, free director-level leaders for strategy, and provide better customer service to nearly a million Nevadans who use BNI-regulated services. The director emphasized that some requests are phased and that further adjustments may follow pending final legislative and policy decisions.

Ending: Committee members pressed staff on details including why DHRM roles would not revert to BNI and asked for follow‑up materials. Sanchez said some changes respond to statutory shifts such as the 2023 transfer of occupational licensing boards (SB 431). He said the agency will return for additional presentations on remaining divisions at a later hearing.